Traverse
by Her Majesty of Pluto
Summary: Regret and guilt causes the Champion of Kirkwall to leave his office and sail to a distant land, where in tragedy and encounters his companion comes to learn of acceptance, compassion, and wide horizons.
1. Chapter 1

**Chapter 1: Ghost of a Champion**

* * *

Fenris no longer needed to be let in, now that he was living with Hawke. The Hawke estate appeared as it had always been: velvet red, tall and proud. Bodahn came to greet him in the entryway. He could hear the lilts of music from Orana's lute as she played by the sitting room fire, curled up against the mess that was Bodahn's boy, Sandal, and Eddard, Hawke's purebred marbari. The song was a melancholy one. Fenris wondered if it was something Hawke had taught her, or a piece she'd composed herself. It wasn't anything like the music the Tevinter magisters got their more skilled slaves to play.

Orana glanced up at his arrival but didn't stop playing to attend to him. She had, thankfully, grown past that and even begun to address Hawke as 'Messere' rather than 'Master'. She looked better too—well-fed, not frightened—and more present as a person than she had been before.

He needn't ask where the master of the house was. He found Hawke sitting on the upper floor of his study, leaning back against the balusters, beside the memento from the Vimmark Mountains. In one hand he held a goblet and in another, the bottle of the wine he was pouring into it. An array of books and papers lay about his bare feet.

Living with Hawke was an arrangement he couldn't complain about. It meant a proximity he'd come to appreciate as if it was the warmth of a blanket in the winter's cold. Proximity also meant that he could see the traces of the man when the man himself was absent: the precision with which Hawke always put his clothes away, the organisation of his work table (and rue the day anyone messed with his system), the open book by the perfectly-made bed that was bookmarked by a single rectangular slip of spare linen. He'd thought at first, and incorrectly too, that Orana did all the cleaning around the house. But growing up as the oldest son of a peasant, working the farm and tending the animals, gave Hawke a sense of humble responsibility Fenris still found surprising coming from a mage.

Of late, however, he had been finding Hawke this same way: a crumpled mess on the study room floor, long hair dishevelled and eyes slightly glazed from either wine or Antivan brandy. And surrounded by books, all open and rifled through as if he'd spent hours trying to find answers within them.

"I still kept it, you know?" slurred Hawke as Fenris began to perform what seemed like the age-old chore of taking the bottle out of Hawke's hand. Fenris tipped the bottle to his lips. There was little left.

"What is it?" he asked, partly with irritation and partly with fatigue.

It was the age-old game of the age-old questions. And it had not been a year since the destruction of the Chantry; not a year of Hawke's term as Viscount.

"His manisfesto. It was nearly complete."

Not a year since that mage abomination's death.

"And what would you do about it?" Fenris snapped as he started to gather the books, to put them away despite knowing that they were all going to come down again the very next day. "He committed a crime and he paid for it."

Hawke didn't answer. In latter days, he no longer argued, no longer tried to make Fenris see. Fenris paused at a book, recognising the title on the spine. There was a time when he struggled to read the letters. He struggled still, here and there especially over complex tomes, but the Book of Shartan was one he knew well, because it was the one he had read over and over with Hawke.

"It widens your horizons," Hawke used to say of the virtues of reading, with a grin that told Fenris he was thinking of other things.

Fenris stole a glance at the mage.

"Have you eaten?" he asked. He had to ask for Hawke would forget. Hawke always forgot when there was no one to check.

Hawke shook his head. "Can't keep anything down."

That caused Fenris to whirl around, his task of shelving the books forgotten. "And the drinking isn't going to help," he pointed out.

Hawke struggled to a stand, swaying a little on his feet, and head held in a hand. In time he said with a grimace, "In the morning perhaps. Or after the paperwork has been done. Dock worker petitions for better pay and work conditions… Opening a free clinic in the alienage… Will probably need to speak to First Enchanter Reddick about that. Cullen is not going to be happy…"

"You will accomplish nothing in this state," Fenris said, shoving the rest of the books he still held in the first available shelf space he could find before going up to the mage.

Hawke always turned to work, drowning himself in legislations and petitions, dossiers and official letters, when the old memories and regrets began to plague him.

He was not a bad Viscount. If anything, Fenris didn't think Kirkwall could ask for a better leader. The city was still without a proper chantry, so the devoted faithful held prayer meetings in re-purposed homes in prominent parts of Kirkwall. Cullen kept order over the Templars as the new Knight-Commander. The Circle was rebuilt to become more of an institution rather than a prison, and mages were allowed employment, visitors, and a number of privileges they never had under the older order. The newer, greater freedoms were something Fenris and Hawke still disagreed over, but the mages were at least kept in check within Circle walls.

But in keeping his head in concern after concern, in trying his hardest to be the leader the city so sorely needed in the face of the Circle uprisings beyond the walls of the city, Hawke was spreading himself thin. He faced accusation after accusation from political oppositions and rebel factions. Dissenters rose among his people, those who knew mages annulled in the battle of the Gallows, apostates who'd managed to slip away from the Templars. To them, all of him was a hypocrisy: a mage, who'd freed every rogue mage he came across, only to turn it all around at the end in the greater name of the people of Kirkwall. That alone was enough to have him branded a traitor and an opportunistic social climber.

Fenris had thought Hawke had made the right decision at the time. He even gave a nod of approval when Hawke sunk that blade into Anders' back. He just never expected that the guilt, of having to end a friend and to kill those who shared his own magic-plague, coupled with the rigours of governance and leadership, would come to wear so heavily on the man.

Hawke started down the stairs—to his desk, Fenris knew if no one was there to stop him.

He took the mage's arm and led him out of the study. "To bed with you. The work can wait till morning."

Hawke moved like a man emptied of a soul. Fenris often wondered how he could be so worn by night and keep a straight back by day in the Keep.

Once in the bedroom, he stepped up to help Hawke out of his clothes, for the man couldn't seem to work the knots of the belt. As he did, Hawke undid the leather tie holding back his hair. The robe fell open to reveal the span of dark chest beneath, broken by scars from wounds he'd sustained from the old days of fighting shades in abandoned caverns and thugs plaguing Kirkwall's night. Hawke still did that, sometimes, when petitions and complaints kept him late in the Keep, though he could get so reckless about it as to send the guards running up to aid him, and Aveline to lecture him the following morning.

Fenris raised his eyes to see Hawke gazing over his shoulder at the fire. Hawke could do with a haircut, but there was a certain beauty to the way his long hair curled past his shoulders, and to his moon-grey eyes, so stark against his dusky skin.

As he did every night, Fenris curled his hand around the back of Hawke's head and crushed the man's lips down to his own. Some nights, when those eyes were especially glazed from too much drink, Hawke responded with an equal measure of passion. Other nights, Hawke took him gently, his touches slow and lazy from the familiarity of the body he was making love to. And then there were still other nights when Hawke would break the kiss to hold Fenris away at arm's length, when the mage's eyes upon the elf was lucid but sad and confused, almost as if he was seeing Fenris and wishing for another.

Those nights, he thought about how he had never expected that the guilt and the pressures of his position as Viscount, would cause Hawke to look upon Fenris as if everything the elf stood for was everything he wished he had the strength to oppose.

That night was one such night.

"Another time, Fenris," Hawke said gently, giving the elf's shoulders a light squeeze before turning away to undress for the night. "I'm tired."

The gentleness with which Hawke delivered the rejection was more painful than if Hawke had reached in and crushed his heart.

Fenris would have turned away himself, said he wanted to check on the dog, or Orana, if only to come back and climb in beneath the covers when Hawke was asleep. But at the drop of the man's robes to the floor, Hawke reached back to push Fenris aside as the eastern window came bursting in, raining glass all around them. Hawke was already at the room's weapons stand, his staff in hand, and tossing Fenris the elf's sword, which the latter caught with ease.

Eddard was barking downstairs as still more windows seemed to shatter within the house. Orana screamed and somewhere in the chaos, Bodahn's boy could be heard shouting too.

Masked, dark-clad men came through the three windows of Hawke's room, zipping down ropes that they'd likely attached to the roof of the estate just as Hawke turned to Fenris and shouted, "See that Orana and the dwarves are safe. Downstairs! Go!"

"I will not leave you!" Fenris insisted as he dashed forward to slice at a man who was about to take a stab at Hawke.

Hawke caught at another, placed his hand on the man's face, and then sent him backwards into his cronies, light piercing and sizzling from his chest. As the man exploded and others around him with him, Hawke turned back to Fenris and barked, "I'll be fine! Go!"

To seal it, he grabbed Fenris by the front of his leather jerkin and shoved him towards the door, sending a light stone fist into him to get him going. Outside, Fenris vaulted over the baluster to land amidst the men who were swarming the dwarves and Orana. Eddard had a man by an arm and was violently trying to tear it free of the man's body. Fenris got a few attackers with a sideways sweep of his sword and looked up in time to see one making for Bodahn who stood in front of Orana, trying to protect her with naught but a letter opener.

Before Fenris could get to them, Sandal threw, and a little too gleefully too, a small runed stone at the man. It caught him smack in the chest, making him reel back, clawing at it as if it burned. Much like the men in Hawke's room before, the man with the runed stone stuck to his chest fell amidst his fellows and, screaming, exploded, bringing others with him.

When Fenris stared at him, amazed, Sandal only smiled and said, "Boom!"

And with that, the last of the attackers in the main part of the house fell to the floor, crying out in agony as he clung to the remains of a mangled arm.

"Master Hawke!" Fenris heard Bodahn cry out. Upstairs, a battle was still raging on.

Without a look back at the bodies in the main hall, Fenris took the stairs two at a time to get back to Hawke's room. However, as he burst in, Hawke was just finishing the last of the attackers with a chain lightning, an attack that prevented Fenris from intervening.

On seeing Fenris, the mage asked, "Is everyone all right?"

There was no need for an answer, for Eddard pounced in barking and the others could be heard on the stairs.

"Are you all right?" Fenris demanded, rushing up to the mage. A blade had managed to find Hawke's stomach and shoulder. Before Fenris could get a good look at the injuries, Hawke was already casting a healing spell to close up the wounds.

Smirking, Hawke replied, "That's a dozen for me. We're still keeping score right?"

Fenris was about to put in a word of reprimand, for sending him away if anything else, but Bodahn had run to Hawke's side, panting, "Oh! Thank the ancestors you're all right, messere!" and it was all he could do to step aside, into the shadows and the sidelines while Bodahn and Orana went on to fuss over the master of the house.

* * *

"You are sure that this isn't the Coterie like last time?" Aveline asked in her best, investigative guard-captain voice.

Hawke sat in a chair before the fire of his study where Aveline had insisted he remained as her men scoured the mansion and questioned the servants. Fenris stood in a corner, leaning against a bookshelf, his arms crossed over his chest.

"I am sure, Aveline," Hawke replied. "No dwarves. Unfamiliar armour…"

"Crows, most likely," Fenris put in.

"Now, that isn't any better, is it?" Aveline said, frowning over at him. "From an opposition for the Viscount's seat? Or—"

Fenris wanted to stop her, but Hawke was already setting it straight, "Or a person of influence who had someone in the Circle."

He sighed, that characteristic sigh filled with mirth and irony, and added, "Which is the more likely reason seeing how they practically begged me to be Viscount after that massacre at the Gallows was over."

"Hawke," Aveline began. From the way she stood, her own arms crossed, Fenris and Hawke both knew that she was going to go into a lecture. "The best choices are rarely the most popular."

"Perhaps I should have baked everyone a cake as an apology," Hawke went on. "Send the cakes in boxes with a glided card attached, telling the families how sorry I am to blast them into oblivion for the mistake of one man. Say, what would be better? Vanilla or butterscotch?"

Aveline shot him a warning glare. "Hawke. I was trying to help."

Hawke hung his head for the briefest moment before looking back up at Aveline, smiling. "I know… Can't say that my term as Viscount will always be a popular one, now would it?"

The guard-captain smiled at that. "If it was, I would say you're doing something wrong."

Hawke sat staring into the fire long after Aveline left, the issue as to who had sent a squad of assassins after him unsolved. Fenris found the inaction unsettling. Hawke was not one to put such things aside so easily, and especially not if it endangered those under his care. The last time anyone had dared to attack Hawke at his estate, the man had gone all out to put a stop to it. And the last time Hawke had sat staring into a fire, it was after the remaining half of his heart had broken in two following his mother's death.

Fenris left and came back in with a bottle of wine, Orana in his wake with a tray of food for Hawke.

As she set it on the low table, Hawke looked to her and said, "You don't have to, Orana. I can get my own meals."

"I asked her to," Fenris spoke up. "Because you would not get your own meals."

Hawke waited for her to leave before replying, "Because I treat her like a slave? Is that what you're saying?"

"That…was not what I meant. What I meant was—"

"No," Hawke cut in quietly, continuing to stare into the fire. "That was not what you meant."

They sat in silence for a long moment. It was nearing dawn and Fenris had advised him to not go into his office for the day until the matter has at least been partially resolved. The Seneschal would be more than happy, he knew, to be in charge for a day.

Fenris looked to the mage and noted the dark shadows beneath the man's eyes and the beginnings of a wrinkle between his brows. He felt the way he did, four, perhaps five, years ago, when he went to the mage seeking to be of comfort and failing miserably at it.

"Fenris," Hawke spoke up, eyes still fixed on the crackling fire, "when we spoke that night…"

"When?"

"After you killed Danarius…I meant to say—" He stopped and leaned back into the chair. Fear began to crawl its way into Fenris' being while he waited for Hawke to gather his thoughts. "I'd meant to ask if you would rather be away from Kirkwall."

Turning to Fenris, he asked, "If…circumstances had been different and if you had the chance…would you go?"

"And where would I go?" Fenris sharply asked in turn, though he knew he'd wanted to go West.

"A place with no bad memories," Hawke replied, "where you can start anew."

Fenris looked down at the markings and, indicating them, said wryly, "To start anew, I will have to be free of these and of the magic that led to them."

He'd expected Hawke to say something profound, thoughtful, or at the very least, argue. Instead, Hawke smiled and said cheerfully, "Well, at least you didn't ask to be turned into a human, or a woman."

Fenris chuckled at that. He ought to have expected that too, that indomitable sense of humour, and be assured by it. And then he found that he was not.

* * *

 **Next Chapter: Primitus Solum**

* * *

A/N: I have not been writing or posting up new stories for a while, and I do wonder if anyone is still reading. However, I started writing this Dragon Age - Skyrim crossover fiction and thought to post it up. It will be a rather long, multi-chapter piece that I hope I will be able to put up with not too much delays in between. While this pairing and this crossover may not be entirely everyone's thing, I still hope it can offer something either the Fenris-M!Hawke supporters or the Skyrim players. Enjoy!


	2. Chapter 2

**Chapter 2: Primitus Solum**

* * *

Fenris came in from a late night walk around Hightown, having needed to clear his head after drinking the swill at the Hanged Man. It was easy to win off the drunkards and Fenris had left with a purse full of coin and only one misguided accusation that he had cheated. Card sessions at the Lowtown watering hole were not the same without Varric and Isabela. Not even Merrill visited the place anymore now that she was focused on helping the elves in the alienage. Not that he was inclined to her presence anyway.

He came in to a quiet house. Perhaps everyone had gone to bed, he thought with some guilt. He had not wanted to be gone for so long after the last attack but Hawke had shut him out of the study, saying he had letters to write. Letters, always with the blasted letters these past few days since the attack. Fenris had stood at the door of the study for a long while before Bodahn quietly told him to go out and get some air. He'd left Bodahn with instructions to bring Hawke bread and a little wine, and to make sure that the mage take his herbal mix before he turned in for bed.

On silent feet, he went upstairs to the room they now shared, stopping by the last of the massive windows to briefly look out of it. The Arenburgs were fighting again, an inconsequential fact that Hawke would like to know since he had been keeping tabs on the relationship statuses of his neighbours. Also, the Dumere boy had a new male lover in his bed, two weeks before his wedding to the daughter of one of the noblemen.

Noting these, he went into the room.

Hawke was awake and dressed, not in his lounge robes, but a fitted leather jerkin over a shirt, rough pants, and a sturdy pair of traveling boots, which he was strapping on as Fenris walked in. Sitting beside him on the bed was a belt with an attached purse and satchel. By his feet was a large rucksack, fully packed by the looks of it.

The man secured the last strap of his boots and stood up as Fenris entered. Fenris' appearance must have been a study because for a moment, Hawke was at a guilty loss of words.

"I…" Hawke began uncertainly, not looking at Fenris, "wanted to see you before I go."

"Go?!" snapped Fenris. "Go where?"

"Close the door, Fenris," said Hawke. "No one else needs to hear this."

"To blazes with—"

"Fenris."

Seeing that Hawke was settling for no argument, Fenris did as suggested and marched up to the mage, glowering the whole way.

Rounding up on Hawke, he hissed, "Tell me where you plan on going, and you better make it good, mage."

Hawke considered him and then sighed, smiling tiredly as he did. "Still only a mage to you."

He paused and then raised a hand to touch the side of Fenris' face, taking in the face of the elf as if it was going to be the last time he was ever going to do so.

"After this, you're going to think even less of me," he said, running a thumb in an arc under Fenris' eye, "but I am leaving Kirkwall." He paused to let it sink in and then added, "For good."

"And go where exactly?"

"Where there are no bad memories and no imminent threats of exalted marches. Where Templars aren't fighting mages and mages aren't fighting against everything the Maker made them."

"You are naive, Hawke," Fenris argued. "As long as magic exists, there will be those who fight against it and for good reason."

Hawke drew his hand back, so forcefully that it could have been a slap. He turned to take his belt from his bed and went on to fasten it around his hips, a little below the jerkin.

"You were never one to run away, Hawke," Fenris tried, grabbing hold of the man's arm to stop him from taking up his rucksack.

"No." Hawke shook off Fenris' hand. "But I am not above wanting something different." To Fenris, he continued, very close to pleading, "You must think me irresponsible for walking away from my office like this, but look at me. I am no leader, Fenris. Drinking myself into oblivion every night, trying to find answers, justifications in the writings of a dead man who was a friend, who trusted me with his life. Which I took. And I let take… all those other lives: Mother, Bethany… Every day, this is what I face. Every day, I hear only voices. Voices, voices, voices! And none of them my own. Accusations, complaints, the laughter of the dead and gone. Look at me, Fenris,"—Hawke whirled around and jabbed his fingers, once, twice, hard into his chest—"look at me, and tell me that you do not see an abomination. If not one, but one about to happen. Tell me, you do not force all those medicines and cures on me because you fear I am going to lose myself to my mind like all mages do! Tell me!"

"Easmon…"

The fear was palpable in Fenris and he could not tell if it was a fear of losing the man to the journey he planned to undertake, or the weakening walls of a mage's constantly haunted mind.

Hawke shook his head and took up the rucksack. "I cannot—I…" Looking at Fenris once more, he said, "I seek only peace. If I die at sea never hearing another word about mages and templars, I die a happy man, Fenris. Can I not be granted that? At the very least?"

"But, where, Hawke?" asked Fenris quietly, the sunken weight a sitting stone in the pit of his stomach.

"The Primitus Solum sails at dawn. The captain was looking for able-bodied men on a voyage east, past the known borders. The man's foreign. Never heard of me."

"Through uncharted waters? No one has ever gone that far out from Thedas."

"So I've heard," Hawke replied. He smiled and Fenris saw a little of the old Hawke in the glint of the man's eyes. "A sea of monsters, perilous lands inhabited by snake and cat people, and elves of myriad colours." Grinning, he added, his voice a low, husky rumble, "And you know how much I like elves."

With new solemnity, he said to Fenris, "I would like you to know that no matter what, I lo—"

Fenris held up a finger, silencing him. He went over to his personal chest where he kept his things and began packing a rucksack of his own.

Hawke watched him for a while before finally saying, "Fenris…you don't have to come with me."

"And what would you have me do instead?" Fenris growled as he gave the strings of his rucksack a vicious tug to close it.

"Go west like you've always wanted. Start over. Bed buxomy, dusky beauties. That is what you've always wanted, isn't it? I remembered how you looked at Isabela."

Snapping around to face Hawke, he spat, "If you didn't want me along, you would have left. Now, let's go before the city wakes and all hope of anonymity is lost."

Hawke stared at him in wide-eyed disbelief before lifting a corner of his lips in a familiar smirk. "If you are coming with me, perhaps you could wear something other than that spiky armour. And I am sure the sailors are not going to be thrilled to have an elf traipsing about on deck with a big sword strapped to his back."

"Pay them the gold to shut them up."

Hawke argued no more, choosing to toss Fenris a cloak instead and fasten one around his own shoulders. On the way to the front door, they stopped by the study and, as if he knew what Fenris was thinking, Hawke picked the two books that Fenris was always reading, slipped it into a book bag which he proceeded to sling across Fenris' body. There were letters on the study desk. Fenris didn't need to look to know who they were addressed to: Carver who was in the Grey Wardens, Bodahn, Aveline, his cousin, Charade…maybe even the Seneschal and Cullen.

Near the door, Eddard bounded up to them with a quiet 'ruff'. Fenris watched as Hawke knelt down to wrap his arms around the marbari. If Hawke had been willing to cry, Fenris knew he would have then.

"Watch over Sandal and Orana, now, you hear?" the man whispered. "And Charade too when she moves in with Uncle."

Eddard whimpered and cocked his head to the side. "And make sure Aveline's guards are always in shape for whatever comes," Hawke went on, rubbing the marbari's head. He gazed down at the marbari and when he next spoke, there was a quaver in his voice, "I will miss you, ol' boy."

Hawke took leave of no one else—straightened up and marched right to the door without a look back. However, just before they crossed the threshold into the silent night of Hightown, Hawke cast Fenris a glance that was at once tender and concerned. Fenris' only reply was to draw the ample hood of the cloak over his head and indicated the door with a jerk of his chin. Hawke drew forth his own hood and they made their way to the docks, making sure to avoid the guards on patrol.

Getting Fenris onto the ship was easy. It seemed the captain was still looking for men for the insane voyage hours before the Solum's scheduled departure. They settled in among others, mostly Kirkwall's poor, a good number of whom were elves hoping to start a better life far from the shores of Thedas. It was only when they were a good distance away from the docks of Kirkwall that Hawke dared to remove his cloak. Though he needn't have to worry. The higher up one was, the lesser known one's face could be among those who stood at the very lowest. There were the few who knew him but by then they were too far away from Kirkwall for it to be of any consequence to anyone. On kingless sea, it was easy to believe that no man had power over another, not when the very winds could be a gentle, caressing lover one moment and seek to kill in sudden fury the next. The two of them stood in silence on the starboard side of the Solum, enjoying the rush of briny air in their faces as they thought of stranger places.

* * *

 **Next Chapter: A Stranger Place**


	3. Chapter 3

**Chapter 3: A Stranger Place**

* * *

In the face of lashing winds, Fenris couldn't help but remember something Varric once said about travellers' tales: "It's not a good story until you've been hit by a terrible storm or two."

The winds that whipped around him and stung his face was biting cold. Frigid wetness seeped beneath his leathers, chilling him. His foot still hurt from the injury he had sustained about a week back, slipping on the deck and cutting it against a piece from a broken barrel. He wished he'd worn boots. He had to make do with binding his feet.

He was standing at the foot of the main mast with a number of others, waiting for the main sails to fall so that the storm sails could be rigged in their place. Hawke had gone up with a number of the men to accomplish the task of rigging. Fenris wiped the spray from his face and squinted up through the deluge to see if his man had made it up there safely. Already five men had been thrown overboard. A dark shape rose out of the water once, caught at a screaming body as it sailed through the sky and disappeared beneath a crash of waves that rocked the Solum more than it already was.

The captain was at the bow, steering the ship to reef it. There had been questions as to whether they should lie ahull but between the monsters lurking underwater and the icebergs they'd narrowly missed on a few occasions, it would have been suicidal to think that the Solum could fare for herself.

Someone gave a shout and Fenris took an instinctive step back and caught at the main sail as it came down. Half of the crew was on the starboard deck, working at keeping the ship upright so that the storm sails could be rigged. In due time they were and the men up top came careening down the lines, Hawke among them.

In the time that they had been at sea, Hawke had come to look every bit the sailor: scruffy jaw, dark hair curled and roughened by the salt and the sun, body all sinew and muscle. He approached Fenris and performed that old habit of tilting the elf's head up by the chin to check if the latter was all right. Hawke's shirt clung to his skin and gaped open at the chest, completing the picture of every maiden's fantasy. Fenris grunted and tore his face out the man's hand, more pressing needs foremost on his mind.

As the regular sails were stored away, the ship was finally downwind and in no danger of capsizing. Fenris and Hawke joined a few others below deck to wait out the storm. Seated on a rum barrel, Fenris gingerly unwind his footwraps. The infected foot gave off a smell that almost made him gag.

"How's the foot, Fenris?"

Fenris looked up to see Hawke approaching him, a tankard in each hand.

"Worse off than before…" Fenris admitted. It was nothing a proper poultice and clean bandages couldn't treat, but the constant moisture, even of the salty kind, and a shortage of medical supplies made proper care next to impossible. They had not seen land in a long time, so both disease and tempers were running high.

It was a time when a healer came in very handy and when Hawke wasn't helping out on deck, he was below deck, using what little healing magic he knew to alleviate the effects of ship-borne ailments. There had been another healer a few weeks before, an elf from the alienage who'd managed to keep out of the templars' notice. But the rigours of the journey and recurring bouts of seasickness soon wore the man down and they lost him to a demon.

"Let me take a look at it," Hawke said, handing Fenris his tankard.

"Save your strength. It will heal." Also, they were fresh out of lyrium potions.

"Stop being so bloody stubborn about it."

There was such a finality in his voice that Fenris relented, lifting his leg so that the mage could take a better look at his foot. Hawke touched it without a second thought, and Fenris' markings began to react to the healing magic that coursed through his body. He endured it for a while, the hum and then the first pinpricks of discomfort before it got to the extend that he had to tell Hawke to stop.

The foot appeared significantly better but they both knew Fenris was going to be limping on it for a long time after.

Hawke continued to let Fenris' foot rest in his lap and the other made no move to remove it. They were past caring about keeping their relationship a secret from the passengers and the crewmen. Bunking together in cramped quarters warranted little privacy. They both had, at some points, had to spurn the occasional advances of desperate men, but a big sword and the ability to summon lightning at will proved to be good deterrence.

"You think we will ever see land?" someone spoke up from a corner bunk.

"We 'ave to," someone else said. "I paid good coin to get on this expedition."

"What do you think we will find?"

"I dunno. But I es'pect to get plenty rich."

"It won't matter if we don't ever get home."

"I didn't sign up to get 'ome."

Hawke and Fenris exchanged a glance. The question of ever seeing land again had been foremost on their minds of late. Some nights, they'd even dreamt of solid ground beneath their feet, ground that stayed and would not sway. An old look of guilt passed Hawke's face, in memory, no doubt of the time he said he would be happy to die at sea.

Fenris was about to speak when a crewmen came partway down the steps and announced, "Land, lads! We've spot'ed land!"

Everyone clambered up the steps, wishing to be the first up on deck to see this promised land. They had passed the storm and the air was frigid calm, as well as shrouded in thin fog. Small bodies of ice floated in the sea around them, but it was the tallish spots on a white mass in the far distance that held everyone's attention. As the Solum neared, breaking through sheets of ice, the ground rose into vast mountains and the spots became trees.

Hawke stood beside the captain on the bow of the ship, praying to the Maker that what he saw was real and not a figment of a tired mind.

"So…this is it…" he heard the captain say. "Skyrim."

That caused Hawke to turn to the captain. "You actually knew about this?"

"Aye…that I did. I just didn't know if it really existed, or if the elves were too high on dust, and seeing things in those damned mirrors of theirs." He paused to marvel at the discovery and then his expression changed from one of reverence to concerned interest. "I hope the natives are friendly."

Nearer still and they could see the mouth of a river. The captain gave the orders for the Solum to be brought further inland, 'nice and gently', and for the peaceful approach signal flags to be raised on the main mast—"and let's hope them natives can read them," he said to no one in particular as he pushed away from the rails. To the rest of crewmen, he added, "Get the swing guns ready. Just in case."

Hawke turned away from the captain and watched as the dark collection of rocks took form in the cloud of snow. As walls and rooftops became recognisable, he knew they had not chanced upon new land ready for colonisation. The natives of the land were unlikely to be hunters and gatherers huddling around newly-discovered fires. From the architecture alone, Hawke could discern a civilisation, and from its state, knew that it was one rife in both war and centuries of history. Still, there was something about the Skyrim air that called at him to incline his head, close his eyes, and inhale. It was nothing like the Free Marches and absolutely nothing like brown and muddy Ferelden. It wasn't simply the weather or the grand peaks that rose up on either side of the river, or the white clouds rolling low between the trees. Rather, it was as if the rock and stone itself was different, clean and free of taints from darkspawn and lyrium alike.

He looked to Fenris, intending to ask what the elf thought of the new land, but he saw how the other was barely keeping himself from shivering in the scant excuse for armour he was wearing. He reached out to wrap an arm around the elf's shoulders and pulled the other to him.

The Solum was met by a squad of big blokes in heavy silver and red armour at the docks, moving precisely in formation and staring impassively from out of helmets. Their commander, yet another big man but one who sported a plumed helmet and a full-length, red and gold cape with a diamond symbol of a dragon, was speaking to the Solum's captain, though there seemed to be a problem with communication.

"Ex-plo-rers," the captain repeated for the umpteenth time. "Most of us here are Free Marches seeking out new frontiers in the east."

It was not so much of a language barrier, Hawke realised. The commander was speaking and Hawke found himself able to make out words—as if he spoke a different variation of the same language, a variation the captain was invariably unable to get.

"There is no space in the docks. If you wish to trade, do so and be on your way."

Hawke made his way down the gangplank just as the captain turned away. Throwing his arms up in exasperation, the captain said, "I don't think he understands me."

"I don't think he could quite catch the Free Marches' accent," Hawke replied with a smile. To the commander, he tried, slowly, "We are not tradesmen, good ser. We came from a long way off and we seek only to dock for a few days' rest and to stock up on supplies."

"Where are you from?" the commander said with a heavy accent that seemed to have the texture of stone wrapped up in fur. If that was not what his accent was, then it was at least the closest to the man himself. He had a weathered face, not from age particularly, but from having lived a life braving the elements—rough skin that looked perpetually smudged in dirt, deep set eyes under harsh, furrowed eyebrows. He cast his hard, blue eyes over the sunken faces peering over the side of the Solum, elven and human in equal measure. Finally, he looked to Hawke, travelling those eyes over the whole of the man. "Hammerfell?"

"Hammer fell…where exactly?"

"Not one of Hammerfell's Redguards?" the commander asked.

"I was a…"—mage, he didn't say—"nobleman."

"Nobleman? From the Imperial City in—" and here he added a name, something that sounded like 'Cee-Roh-Deel'.

"Are you from Cyrodiil?" the commander asked again, evidently growing impatient. "Those Bosmer don't look like anything I have ever seen in Skyrim."

"Bosmer?"

"Wood Elves."

"No, I am Ferelden. But this is a ship from the Free Marches."

"It is not in the registry and the docks are full, therefore it cannot be allowed to remain docked here."

"The very fact that it is docked already, means there is space for it to dock, isn't it?" Seeing the steely glower of the man, he shook his head and asked instead, "Nevermind. Is there anyone I can speak to about that?"

The commander gave him the once over again, as if to assess his import and state of mind, and then jerked a thumb towards a row of warehouses along the dockside. "See the harbourmaster in the East Empire Company office. Second door from the right. We will also have to inspect the ship and its cargo."

Hawke went in through the indicated door with Fenris, leaving the captain with his ship. But not before they had to cut through a stream of dock workers carrying cargo back and forth between ships and warehouses. The two couldn't help but stare. All of the dock workers were…reptilian…lizards walking on two feet, dressed in people clothes, swaying tails, carrying on as if it they were the most natural thing to exist. Ever.

One of them flashed them a look of what they could only take to be hostility as he passed, a crate wedged between his shoulder and the side of his head. Both Fenris and Hawke prepared themselves for a fight, or at least questions, but the lizard man only shouldered his way past them, muttering, in a voice the texture of something smooth and gravelly all at once, "The Nords don't appreciate us, but so what? I don't appreciate them right back."

The combination of an articulate lizard man caused them both to pause and stare after him.

"That would be an Argonian, traveller," a voice spoke behind them.

They turned to see one of the guards from the entourage that had met them. He had a youngish face, brown-eyed and shaven. He didn't have the commander's accent about him.

"I take it you have never seen one," he went on, keeping to his cross-armed, open-legged stance, "from the looks on your faces."

"No…" Hawke began. "Are all Argonians this unfriendly?"

"Not all, I would think. But if you have to work the docks all day and can't go past the gates for a pint to rest the bones with, I would be unfriendly too."

"Why can't they go past the city gates?" asked Hawke.

"It was the previous Jarl's decree to have them be kept out of the city. It would have been the same for them as it is with the Khajiits but the Argonian's ability to breathe underwater and live in wet conditions make them good dock workers."

"The previous Jarl?"

"Ulfric Stormcloak. Good man. Killed in the civil war."

Fenris recognised the little furrow between Hawke's brows, the furrow that told him Hawke was going to start a debate, about what's right and what's wrong, about how people ought to be treated fairly and not be judged based on the colour of their skin or the abilities they were born with.

"If that Jarl's gone, what is keeping these dock workers out here?" he asked, motioning about him.

The guard only shrugged. "The Nords here are not used to seeing Argonians among them and even though the civil war's over, there is still a lot of animosity going on. Jarl Brunwulf thinks it's best for them to stay outside the city, for their safety."

"And when will that ever stop?" demanded Hawke.

"Hawke," Fenris began, taking hold of the mage's arm. When Hawke looked over his shoulder at him, he went on, indicating the warehouses, "We still need to talk to the harbourmaster."

"Things don't change so quickly, traveller," the guard said, oddly unfazed by Hawke's line of questioning. "Now, no lollygagging."

* * *

"We are not simply opening up the gates for a bunch of immigrants from across the border," the harbourmaster said with finality, waving his hand in the air above him without looking up from the paper he was reading. "We did that for the grayskins once and what did that lead to?"

"But you can't just keep people out like this," Hawke argued, bending over the man, getting in his light, palms planted on the surface of the desk. "If the hunger does not take them, the weather will."

The harbourmaster looked up. He was a little past middle-aged, greying hair worn frazzled and short below the ears. He had the look of man in bad need of ale, or whatever it was that these people drank. "Then you should have stayed in whichever pisshole you emerged from. Where is that? Hammerfell for you?"

A muscle in Hawke's jaw throbbed.

He drew in a breath and then went on, doing his best to sound charming, "We have goods to trade and I dare say these are goods you will not find anywhere here in Skyrim."

"And how does that benefit me, exactly?" the harbourmaster scoffed. "I have to deal with shipments day in and day out. These Argonians are hardly to be trusted with it."

Hawke considered him a moment, and then said, "How much would it cost to let these people in?"

That caused the harbourmaster to look up with some interest. Casting his eyes over the trades office, he asked Hawke in a low voice, "How much is it worth to you?"

Fenris leaned in to Hawke's broad back. "Do you think this is wise? We may not have enough to survive with in the first place."

Hawke ignored him and instead drew his purse from his belt. He dropped the purse and it fell to the harbourmaster's desk with a loud and heavy 'clink'. The strings came loose and the purse fell open to spill coin and an assortment of jewellery, finely crafted ones that Fenris knew the mage used to augment his magical abilities in combat.

The harbourmaster did badly at feigning disinterest as he picked up a sovereign to examine it.

"This isn't a septim," he observed and then proceeded to bite down on it.

"But it is gold," Hawke pointed out. With regards to the jewellery, he added, "And you can get good gold for these too."

The harbourmaster did not seem particularly pleased with the silvers and the coppers, but he no doubt recognised their value as currency.

"Hmm…" he hummed, stroking at his chin. Finally, he glanced up, first at Fenris, and then Hawke, before deciding, "All right. All seems to be in order. The Solum can dock here for three days to trade and restock. But no more."

"And the people?" asked Hawke.

The harbourmaster drew a fresh sheet of paper from his desk drawer. Dipping the tip of his feather pen in ink, he said, "That will be a problem for Brunwulf and the guards. They can slum it out in the Gray Quarters for all I care." Shaking his head, he muttered as he wrote, "I should have gone back to the Imperial City when I had the chance."

He wrote out a letter of docking approval for Hawke to bring back to the captain.

Outside of the office, Fenris spat, "What were you thinking, giving him all your coin?"

"All our coin," corrected Hawke.

"That does not make it better, Hawke," Fenris growled.

Cheerfully, Hawke told him, "Hey! Look at it as if it's an adventure! We can sign ourselves up as mercenaries somewhere and earn it all back!"

Fenris continued to glare at the man, although the smile that Hawke wore then warmed him in the cold Skyrim weather.

"It will be just like the old days!"

Fenris wanted to point out that back in the old days, they were at least on ground that was familiar to them, surrounded by peoples they know of—humans and elves, qunari, mages and templars. Here, in Skyrim, they couldn't even be sure if magic existed and if magic did exist, they had no idea how it was treated. He wondered if Hawke was to be considered an apostate, to be hunted down and housed in a Circle. He wondered if there were magisters like the ones in Tevinter, and if there was slavery still. What he saw out in the docks, people kept separated because of the way they looked, had not been comforting.

Back in the old days, they had friends they could meet for drinks and cards in the Hanged Man. Now, they were both alone, in this place with no space, and rightly, no name.

* * *

 **Next Chapter: Season Unending**


	4. Chapter 4

**Chapter 4: Season Unending**

* * *

The marketplace smelt of fish and meat, and molten metal from a smelter in the corner by which the blacksmith and his assistant were working. Above the cacophony of haggling and merchants advertising their wares, the sound of hammer beating down on armour plates and the shrieking of a blade being sharpened could be heard. Faces of human men and women mingled with those they later found to be 'Dark Elves', or the 'Dunmer'. Their red eyes were set against contrasting grey skin, though with the pointed ears, elongated faces, and high cheekbones characteristic to even the elves on Thedas. However, where the elves on Thedas were generally considered beautiful for the delicacy of their appearance, the elves of Skyrim, especially the Dunmer, were fearsome-looking with their prominent brow arcs and the severe slant of their eyes They didn't seem fragile either, for a good many stood as tall as Hawke, who was himself a tall man, and some were built almost as strongly. For all of that, what was most intriguing, (especially to Fenris), was that the men of these elves—Dunmer, Bosmer, or Altmer—had facial hair; that they really could grow beards.

The racial discrimination, however, was a painfully familiar thing. It became obvious in the brief moment that they were in the city of Windhelm that there was a clear Dunmer-Nord divide. The Grey Quarter through which they traversed when they were trying to find the way to the marketplace was a network of narrow alleyways, lined with trash and hovels made of wood and leather scraps. The doors of the proper homes, if they could even be called that, were made of messes of wood that appeared to have been salvaged from broken parts from the docks. Most were barely on their hinges and the holes in them made them inadequate covers against the bitter winds. Human beggars squatted among their Dunmer brethren, warming their hands above fires lit in old cauldrons. Fenris almost unwrapped his sword from its leather cover when he saw a man, a Nord, drunk on either ale or mead, slurring insults at the Dunmer he passed, even going so far as to spit near the feet of one.

An Imperial guard came up behind him and put an end to any further show of hostilities, but it was really Hawke's hand on his shoulder that stopped Fenris from cutting the man down.

"Guard! I am a, hic, friend of the Drago… Drago... Dragon…born!" the man slurred as another Imperial guard came to persuade him to leave. "He… he… socked me in the face and everything!" He held his fists up, the other still gripping the neck of his bottle. "In a brawl! Hic. It's a Nord's way of… of… saying…"

Hawke, seeing the situation as well under control as it could be, jerked his head towards the end of the alleyway, and they started to leave.

"Yes…yes," the first Imperial guard was heard saying, leading the drunk man away. "I am sure our esteemed friend would be pleased to hear you threatening the elves in his favourite city. Now be off with you before we run you in for disrupting the peace." To the Dunmer, he added, "We will be on our way."

Thankfully, they found the marketplace shortly after—a lady, who was somewhere near her latter years, actually squawked at Fenris, pointing to the spikes of his armour that was not fully concealed by the cloak, "Watch yourself with that! You can poke someone's eye out!" and then went on her way, muttering about how she should pay some Captain Lonely-Gale another visit to complain about clothing regulations.

They came to stand before a stall that sold weapons, armour, and sundry, manned by a tall, spindly Altmer woman, whose facial features were set to reflect a level of superiority that would make the Dalish run for their history. Niranye, as she introduced herself, was right then inspecting an amulet Hawke had given her. Fenris recognised it to be the Arlathan Focusing Crystal that Hawke always had with him as surely as his family's signet ring.

Finally, she looked up, and said, "I can give you thirty septims for this."

"Thirty?!" cried Hawke, and Fenris drew his hood further down over his head, knowing the man was going to go on a haggling rampage from there.

"That is easily more than a hundred gold. It increases mana and mana regeneration, and it is not an item you can get anywhere here in Skyrim," Hawke argued.

Niranye held up the amulet and pointed at the red-orange crystal centrepiece. "Each scratch on this crystal can easily lower the value of the amulet by ten. As I have no way of finding out if the amulet's augmenting qualities even work, I dare say I am being generous."

"Transport out of Windhelm cost at least twenty septims from what I heard and that will take you five feet from the front gate!"

Niranye was undeterred. "Oh… do tell me all your problems. I enjoy listening to the troubles of others."

"Oh, I would love to," Hawke responded in kind. He leaned on the stall's countertop and said with his equally charming smile, "But that will be wasting your sweet, precious time. A beautiful woman like you must have places to be, lovers to be pleased by… so why don't you find some kindness in that equally beautiful heart of yours to help the poor people, huh?"

Niranye leaned forward in turn, bringing her face close to Hawke's. She lowered her lids, smiling as she took Hawke in, before she finally said, "You are lovely to look at… but…,"—leaning back she added briskly—"no. I don't haggle. If you want a higher price for substandard goods, go elsewhere."

Fenris never thought he saw the day when someone was able to resist Hawke's charm. If he was not feeling concerned for the man and their current situation, he would have smiled.

"Seventy-five septims," Hawke haggled anyway. "That crystal can be considered a relic. It has a name and everything."

"You must be mad. Thirty and not a septim more."

"Fifty septims, and I am making major loss from it. I had to fight a dragon too."

Niranye lifted an eyebrow, but there was something to be said about Hawke's power of persuasion. "Thirty-five is my best offer."

Hawke considered it, his eyes travelling to Fenris who stood a pace behind him, trying his best to be inconspicuous.

To Niranye, he said, "I will take thirty if you throw in a pair of boots equal to the remaining value when taken out of fifty."

"That is absurd."

"I am talking about the selling price here and not the buying one. You will still be paying what the amulet is worth and sell off a pair of boots while you're at it. You make a sale in the end."

Hawke kept his best smile up as Niranye considered his offer.

Finally, she gave in. "I will accept on those terms, but know that I am being generous."

"And I will be eternally grateful for that."

Hawke and Fenris both knew that Niranye was not going to give them a pair of boots that was worth twenty septims in selling price, and especially not in buying price.

Nonetheless the mage turned to Fenris when a pair was handed to him and asked that the elf try it. Fenris stared at Hawke, not responding at first. Then he glowered and hissed, "I do not need you to baby me, Hawke. I am fine without them."

"The cold will freeze your toes off, Fenris," urged Hawke gently, kneeling down as he spoke to fit Fenris into the pair.

"Hawke—"

"Oh, shut up, Fenris. When have you never taken anything from me? Besides, I like your toes."

The declaration shocked Fenris, and admittedly, hurt him. As Hawke slipped the boots on, made of stitched skins and lined for warmth, he tried to think of times when he had not depended on Hawke. There was plenty, surely. Before he met Hawke, he had been on his own and he had survived well enough on his own. But how? He had never earned an honest coin to his name, and when he did think he had during his time in Kirkwall, he remembered that most of it came from the split after the sale of loot, of which price Hawke would haggle over like a common fishwife in the slightly more unscrupulous sides of the Lowtown markets. Fenris was sure he owed Hawke more than twenty sovereigns in losses at Wicked Grace.

The thought made him guilty but rightfully angry as well.

He jerked his foot back just as Hawke started to tie the straps for him. "I am no child, Hawke."

"Admitting it is a good start," Hawke said, straightening up. "Where do you intent to go after that?"

Fenris only grunted in frustration and knelt down to tighten the straps of the boots himself. The boots were nothing much to look at, even Fenris who had no fashion sense whatsoever would admit to that. But they were of sturdy make, and lined with a fair bit of fur to keep the cold out. It was loose but the straps were sufficient in holding them to his feet, which felt immediately heavy and awkward after he had them on. The markings on his soles and the healing wound made his feet sensitive to the inner padding, but it was still better than treading on the uneven and icy stone floor of the city barefooted.

He looked over to Hawke who was in the process of counting the coins Niranye handed to him. Something sat on the tip of Fenris' tongue, wanting to be said, and yet not, curbed by the roiling sense of hurt and deficiency. Yet, Hawke appeared but a man then. Fenris was recalled to a time when Hawke was not a nobleman, living out of a hovel in Lowtown with his uncle, trying to earn enough coin to put food on his family table and pay for the Deep Road expedition. People who bumped him in the streets didn't know who he was and he was haggling, always haggling, doing hard work for less pay than the work deserved. To climb so high in the arduous period of near a decade, to finally have power after so long, only to give it all up… and for what?

Fenris looked about him, at the faces of human and mer, at the aged walls, and the empty sky. His stomach gave an embarrassing growl. They had not eaten all day.

"I heard there's a corner club in the Grey Quarter," Hawke said as he joined Fenris. "We could grab some food and try to start for Whiterun from here."

"Why Whiterun?" asked Fenris, slinking through the masses as he went, keeping an instinctive eye out for pickpockets.

"Plenty of farmland," Hawke replied. "I heard they are hiring hands there."

"The two of us?"

"Well, me, mainly. You should try to join the mercenary group that works out from that city. Also heard they could use another sword."

Fenris wanted to say that he could be a farmhand too, even if fighting with a sword was all he knew, but a guard went past him and said, "Let me guess, someone stole your sweetroll?" in such a condescending tone of voice that he forgot what it was he wanted to say. He glared at the man as hard as he could, while making sure to keep Hawke in sight while maneuvering through the crowd.

"Let's find this corner club and be done here," Fenris growled as he caught up with Hawke. "I've had enough of this place with its crowds and filth."

* * *

They ended up having to trek from Windhelm to get to Whiterun. Transport to the city cost twenty septims and the price of a single horse was a thousand: all money they didn't have. Between purchasing a map, food, and some supplies, they were left with naught but twelve septims between them. They were layering the clothes they had to keep out the cold. Fenris even had to fit his chestplate over a few tunics. Hawke had brought neither his Champion's armour nor his staff with him, so much was his wish to leave who he represented back in Kirkwall.

If Hawke were to tell the story, he would have said that the trek was uneventful as he dramatically rolled his eyes to the ceiling: Save for a few bears and sabre cats, a squad of Imperial guards escorting a prisoner, a prisoner who later escaped and jumped into the icy river to get away, stirring the Imperial guards into a commotion. And there were the two random boys who ran up to them and offered to sell them some junk they salvaged from the Maker knew where. Hawke, of course, insisted on taking the boys back home, for which he was rewarded with a loaf of bread and a wheel of cheese by the boys' relieved mother. A particularly shady-looking Argonian tried to sell them something called 'skooma' once, but they didn't know what it was, didn't trust him, and didn't have the money for it either so they went on their way. Not long after, they were held up by a robber but a twitch of Fenris' hand to his sword made the man think twice about "gutting them like a fish". Then there was the duel between a Cryomancer and a Pyromancer—which was how Fenris knew magic existed and was loose in the land—which Hawke thankfully decided to slink past without confrontation. It looked like neither were winning anyway and the icy spikes the Cyromancer was hurling made the most damnable noise that rang in the ears of the two long after when they were trying to get some rest at their crude encampment.

They spent most of their nights outdoors. Every so often, they would come across a settlement, or a farmstead, and Hawke would get right down to helping where he could, much to Fenris' chagrin and amusement. It was something to watch the once great Champion of Kirkwall stoop to hoeing the land or harvesting crops for some overworked farmer's wife: "honest pay for honest work". If Fenris ever doubted that the man had once been a lowly farmboy in Lothering, he didn't then. Hawke seemed more at home in the fields than he did in the Viscount's office.

It wasn't unpleasant, barring the occasional wolves or bears when they were camped out at night. They had heard that sundown brought vampires and werewolves, but they hadn't encountered either in their journey. While hardship was known to tear relationships asunder, there was something to be said about its binding powers as well. They broke bread by the fire as whatever catch for the day cooked above it. On the occasions where they could pull a bottle of mead or ale from an abandoned barrel, they warmed themselves with strong drink as they sat sometimes talking, sometimes in silent reverie. The night skies were always clear and starlit. Every few days, an aurora would stream gauze curtains before the same twin moons—the same two, Satina and her partner, that the people of the new land knew to be "Secunda and Masser" instead. Hawke was free with his affections under the stars. As was Fenris, who was often the one to initiate their intimate tangles, desiring to feel the ripples of muscle beneath his hands, to let desire take the place of his markings' continued discomfort, and not once minding the smell of rank sweat or the clinging scent of the leather that the man had taken to wearing, keeping out the night's cold with the warmth of another.

* * *

Fenris cut down one of the last few and looked past the man's falling body to Hawke who was fighting with a sword and shield that he'd pulled off one of the dead bandits. Hawke did not make a bad show of it either, though his stance was a little clumsy, unused to the weight and swing of the weapon. However, his timing in bringing up the shield was impeccable and he managed to block all of his enemy's attack.

"You know how to use a sword?" Fenris commented. "I'm impressed."

"Oh, I…" Hawke began, sounding embarrassed. He looked down at the sword in the hand, testing the grip and its weight. "My father taught me a little of swordplay when he was training me. Said a mage never knew when he would need it."

"I have never seen you use the sword in Kirkwall."

"I never carried one."

"You could have if you wanted to."

Hawke placed his shield hand on his chest as he cried dramatically, "And outshine yourself and Aveline? Never!"

It was then that Fenris tried to think of the last time he'd seen Hawke cast spells and realised with slight alarm that Hawke had not since they'd landed in Windhelm. They had always avoided fights before this bandit attack. Fires were left to Fenris to light.

"You…have not used your magic once since we came here," observed Fenris, going up to the man.

"I haven't, have I?"

"Is there a particular reason?" Fenris pressed. His first thought was that Hawke had suddenly lost all abilities to do so, and it didn't sit well with him to think that.

Hawke seemed to consider it and then dropped to search through the bandit's belt for salvage. "I wanted to put it all behind me. I've thought back to the life I've had to lead. Always running, always hiding. How Carver hated it." He paused, gazing into the far distance. "And all those people lost… to magic, to the fight against it… The fight… it's like a season that never ends. That is what it felt like. Then I knew…why it was that I could find no peace…" Hawke clenched his jaw, causing a muscle in it to twitch. "You were right. You were always right. Magic is a curse."

Hawke went back to salvaging with more zeal after, swapping the iron sword that he'd used before for a steel one, and finding forty septims in total among the six bodies.

"I am…glad…"Fenris said, finally. He didn't know why but it got him looking at the bodies all around him. Four out of six of the dead were his: bellies cut open, appendages maimed and dismembered, a head had rolled to a stop within kicking distance of his foot. Blood was matting in his white hair, dyeing parts of it red. He felt dirty and suddenly guilty.

Hawke only grinned over at him, waving a bottle of mead and a purse of gold.

* * *

 **Next Chapter: Dovahkiin**


	5. Chapter 5

**Chapter 5: Dovahkiin**

* * *

They descended the snow-covered slopes and came to the hazel plains after having acquainted themselves with the draugr and trolls of a massive Nordic ruin. There was a labyrinthine maze in it with symbols they both soon understood to be the different classes of magic practiced in the land. Not wanting anything to do with them, they had left, Hawke not once giving the ruin a second look back.

"We should have kept to the roads," Fenris grumbled, digging his sword into the ground to take the rucksack of loot that Hawke was holding out to him.

"Oh, come on," Hawke said as he dropped beside the elf, "where's your sense of adventure? We passed through two holds now, and we finally met Orcs."

The Orcs weren't the friendliest lot at first. Mean, tough, and honorific, they had made the two of them Blood-kin by putting them through the task of retrieving a lost artifact from a nearby cave. Turned out the cave was full of necromancers, led by one insane Volkihar Master Vampire, and the artifact, a wee, insignificant-looking hammer, didn't seem well worth the effort. But the Orcish people were more than kind enough to put them up for the night, regaling them in stories of their people and history. Fenris had a hand at brawling with the Orc chief. He lost, for the chief was bigger and taller than he was, and his green fists landed hard blows in all the strategic places. It all ended in good favour. The chief clasped his shoulder, good-natured by Orc standards, and said that he had a strong arm, "for an puny elf". The Stronghold Orcs reminded Fenris a little of the Fog Warriors, in the way they lived and fought and took care of their own.

"Well…they were relatively pleasant to be around with," admitted Fenris. "Still, we could have been in Whiterun two weeks ago, if you hadn't insisted on gallivanting around the country, going into every cave and ruin you see, and then helping every farmwife we come across harvest their bleeding crops."

"I admit," Hawke said, "we did get lost there." Looking off into the distance, he jerked his chin towards a structure in the distance. "There's a cottage up ahead. We should see if we can ask for directions."

"We don't have to ask for directions!" Fenris snapped. "We have a map!"

"So…take a look at it now and tell me where we're going. Lest we be late for our hair appointments."

Fenris muttered something in Arcanum and took the map from Hawke's satchel.

As he consulted the map, he could hear Hawke muttering behind him: "You should be the one to complain, you bloody elf. I am the pack mule here."

"Only because you insist on carrying it all on your own," Fenris replied, half-thinking. "And besides, my sword's heavy, and I have all our food with me. Fair's fair." After a time, he spoke up again, "If we keep heading east, we will come to two farms: Loreius and Heljarchen. From there, the road south will take us directly to Whiterun."

He folded the map with finality and placed it in his own satchel.

"I know that," Hawke insisted.

"And yet you insist on proving otherwise."

"You got lost trying to find me in Chateau Haine."

"Because the building was Orlesian. Nothing in Orlesian architecture makes sense by normal standards."

"So, you admit it," Hawke pressed on. Leaning in close, he whispered suggestively to Fenris, "You're lost without me."

Fenris frowned up at the mage, but the corner of his lips was quirked up in a smirk as he brought his face in close. In a low rumble, he began, "I can—"

And didn't get to finish, for a shadow suddenly swept over them with a thundering roar. The elk and the lone fox that was in the area fled as the shadow came over them again. They were almost in the open now, a distance away from the cottage Hawke had indicated. Another roar, close by and almost manic, forced them back into the meagre cover of trees. Though it proved to be of no help for they were near a clearing and within it, a large, dark form came crashing down, sending up clouds of dust and knocking them off their feet.

There was a shout. It took Fenris a while to figure out that it was Hawke, yelling at him to keep low. Fenris ducked in time for a ream of fire to dash over his head. He could feel the searing heat of the dragon's breath as he reached for the sword on his back, and so hot was the fire that when the tip of the said sword chanced to touch it, it melted, and then was immediately cooled by another breath, this time one cold as the blizzards of Eastmarch.

He managed to roll out of the dragon's line of fire and straightened up along the dragon's winged front claws. It was a dark, hulking thing, covered in spikes along the whole of its back. A red, unnatural glow lined its black scales and its eyes, Fenris saw, were shut tight, almost as if the lids had been sewn together. Yet, it maneuvered as would a seeing thing, sure of where its attackers were, thumping its tail down on the ground to send Fenris reeling in an upward crash of dirt and leaves.

It was speaking, too. In a strange tongue and what little of the common tongue that Fenris could make out: "Gron ko faaz sillesjoor. For the Ideal Masters demand it. Gron ko faaz sillesjoor." Saying it over and over as if in a trance.

"We just haaaad to pick a place with dragons," Hawke complained somewhere in the fray.

Fenris angled his blade to meet a red line along two large scales in the dragon's torso and plunged it as deep in as it could go. The dragon let loose a roar of pain and turned its body as it tried to reach back with its teeth. The blade, made brittle from the previous attacks, broke when Fenris tried to pull it out. That seemed to cause the dragon more pain than before. It lifted off the ground once and then landed heavily again. Fenris managed to dash backwards in time to avoid a fatal snap filled with teeth and drool, his markings coursing its own answering blue-white glow to the dragon's red ones.

Fenris let out a battlecry and prepared for another attack with the remaining half of his sword, the Tevinter Blade of Mercy he'd carried with him from Kirkwall. However, a body came crashing into him, knocking him to the side. His sword skittered out of his hand and he was on the ground, watching in horror as Hawke was caught in a purple-red stream that had issued from the dragon's maw. Square in the back just as the man was straightening up and turning to block the dragon's next attack.

Fenris only had a chance to glimpse the red glow, like cracks and matching the dragon's exactly, that coursed over the whole of Hawke's body, stiffening him over, bending him backwards as his mouth opened in a silent scream. A splitsecond after, the dragon took Hawke in its jaws and shook him as a marbari would a straw toy, before throwing Hawke to the side where he hit a tree and fell to the ground in a bloodied, crumpled mess.

"NO! I WILL NOT ALLOW IT!"

All the world seemed a blur. A glint on the ground indicated the sword Hawke had dropped and this Fenris leapt forward to take. In one motion, he sliced it upwards, catching the dragon across its lower jaw. He pushed the blade up, phasing the whole of his arm through until he could feel the blade piercing the dragon's worming tongue. Still phased, he swept the sword sideways, cutting at the muscle that held the dragon's jaw to its head, and sliced clean through.

The dragon swung its head and threw him back, roaring — choking — its pain as it did so. Fenris tottered on his feet for a while before going in for the kill again. He'd aimed for the head but caught at its wing instead, faltering the beast as it took off.

Fenris was screaming skywards in Arcanum. Hoarsely. Irately. In blinded rage, calling the dragon to come down and fight him. The dragon couldn't fly away. Couldn't leave. It mustn't. Not after what it had done. No, no. He would not allow it. While he still breathed, he would not allow it. His face was wet, from blood or tears, he couldn't tell.

It was then, as if in answer to a silent prayer, a sound like thunder reverberated through the forest, shaking the trees, perhaps even the sky itself. The world seemed to go blue around him and something hit the dragon just as it was clearing the treetops. The dragon was caught in a swirling aurora of energy, and whatever it was caused the dragon to land, heavily near where Fenris stood. A fireball caught at the injured side of the dragon's face, burning blood and exposed flesh to a rotten black. Then a figure, smaller — a man — leapt up to the top of the dragon's head where he plunged his blade directly into the temple.

The figure jumped off as the dragon threw its head back with a cry. It was a dying cry for the head fell forward and unceremoniously met the ground. Its scales began to burn and coalesce into a swirl of bright energy that the figure seemed to absorb. When all was done, only the exposed bones of the dragon remained.

Fenris took one step back, but he didn't care about the sorcery. Dropping the short sword, he lopped over to where Hawke lay still. Hawke's left arm was bent back at an unnatural angle and his head was almost unrecognisable beneath the blood cover that streamed from the gash in his forehead.

"No, no, no, no, no…" Fenris muttered, over and over as if it was the only word he knew. "No, no, no, no, no. You cannot—you mustn't—"

He fathomed no breath, no rise of chest. A part of him refused to accept the worst, and yet another said it couldn't be otherwise. He remembered words, moments…foolish, unhelpful, unconnected ones: Perish the thought! How else would you redecorate the walls? So I shouldn't slit my wrist and dance around naked under the moonlight just to fit in?

Fenris sensed a presence nearby. He jerked his head up to see the man from before kneeling beside Hawke's body, right across from him. The man wore a hood, beneath which a tusked mask stared out impassively. He was dressed in a sort of robe, dark blue with lines of gold and a chest accent in wine red.

He reached out a hand, sparkling in a tinkling of energy, towards Hawke. With lightning reflex, Fenris drew Hawke's dagger from its sheathe and held the blade to the man's dark throat.

When he spoke every word was bitten down upon. Had it been on flesh, that flesh would bleed. "You. Will not. Have. Him," and the last word, he spat out with disgust: "Mage."

The cold press of metal on the side of his own neck forced his attention to the blade that another was holding against him.

"Not the best plan, Bosmer," a voice drawled, sharp and smooth as the blade's edge.

The mage held up his hand and a voice, deep and rough, resonated from behind his mask. "Lower your blade, Teldryn."

Teldryn hesitated and then did as he was told.

To Fenris, the masked man said, "A healing spell."

"How can I trust the words of a man who would not even show his face?" demanded Fenris coldly.

The mage exchanged a glance with the man standing behind Fenris and then proceeded to remove his mask and pull back his hood. Having seen Argonians and having traded with a Khajiit caravan, Fenris ought not to have been surprised by the feline face that stared back at him. But the Khajiit's face looked like it had seen more wars than the Imperium had ever waged. It was crisscrossed with scars, some claw marks and evidence of severe lacerations. There were new ones still in the process of healing, over old ones that had not faded. Golden beads glinted in the hairs along his jaws and only half of his left ear remained. Numerous gold earrings gleamed on both ears, good and bad.

However, it was really the quality of the Khajiit's eyes that held Fenris' attention, pulling him out of a haze of anguish. The cat's eyes were a brilliant blue, pupils concave slits stretched vertically across the irises. The thick brows that were drawn low above them gave the gaze an astute sharpness, but in that sharpness Fenris felt as if he could trust the man, almost intrinsically, and gave the slightest nod to allow him to proceed.

The Khajiit kept his eyes on Fenris as he worked his healing spell. When Fenris looked down, he saw that the wounds were closing and that Hawke was no longer bleeding. Quietly, the Khajiit instructed Fenris to align Hawke's body properly so that the bones could seam together again, and with muted fear, Fenris did as he was asked, feeling that he was doing more damage than good. One could almost hear the sounds of bones popping back into their place and a faint crackling sound like leaves being crushed underfoot. The Khajiit had to remind Fenris twice that he was holding on to too tightly to Hawke's body.

Eventually, the Khajiit drew his hand back and they both waited what seemed to Fenris a whole lifetime. And then Hawke drew breath. Fenris felt his body go slack but tensed up again when Hawke became caught in a coughing fit. The man's eyes flickered open and for a while he struggled to keep them so, as if the morning light was shining in his face.

"What—I…is…is the dragon—wait, Fenris. Are you all right?" he slurred, lifting a weak hand, though he didn't seem clear about where to place them.

"You are lucky, my friend," the Khajiit said, helping Hawke sit up, "that your heart refused to stop even after a throw like that."

"Who—"

"Nevermind who!" Fenris snapped, undecided between kissing or punching the man. "What kind of a foolish stunt was that? I had it all under control!"

Hawke opened his mouth to reply but Teldryn spoke, "What do you think was wrong with it?"

The Khajiit got to his feet and went to join his companion in examining the bones of the dragon. "Crazed. Could barely remember his own name…" He shook his head, regarding the creature. "A waste though. He was one of the most intelligent of his brethren."

"Just as Valerica suspected. The Ideal Masters," Teldryn considered. To the Khajiit, he went on to ask, "But what is he doing outside of the Soul Cairn?"

The Khajiit crossed his arms, thinking. "I would say he had never been in it…but if he has, it means the portals are opening up on Mundus."

"We should bring this news to her."

"Agreed, but…" The Khajiit looked over to where Fenris and Hawke still sat, the shock of the encounter still in their countenances. Turning to them, he said, "Our horses are down by Drelas' Cottage. If you can walk the little distance, we can go to my house in the Pale, where I am in a better position to treat you properly."

Teldryn turned swiftly to his friend and asked, "Are you sure about this?"

"I am," the Khajiit replied. Quietly, he added, "I have also been away from home for far too long."

Teldryn gave a little nod of understanding. "That you have, my friend. Far too long, given the circumstances."

With that he went over to Hawke's side and with Fenris on the other, they got Hawke to his feet to start the trek.

"I wish I can thank you better. I am Easmon Hawke, by the way, " Hawke said as he treaded unsteadily between Fenris and Teldryn. He grimaced at some pain only he could feel and then went on, jerking his head at Fenris, "And you've had the pleasure of meeting the angsty Tevinter elf."

"Quiet, fool," Fenris told him. "I do not wish to aggravate your injuries by hurting you, but I am having a hard time of it."

The Khajiit chuckled, a pleasant, low and rumbling sound. He turned around, walking backwards to keep the pace, and then the rather big and fearsome-looking man shot them a grin as he bowed almost impertinently.

"Jah'riq Donton. Dragonborn, and always of service."

* * *

 **Next Chapter: Heljarchen**


	6. Chapter 6

**Chapter 6: Heljarchen**

* * *

They came to two horses waiting patiently by the cottage that Hawke had pointed out from the distance — Drelas' Cottage. Jah'riq warned them not to go in if they were ever in the area. "Real unfriendly fellow. Dabbling in necromancy, supposedly, though I have never seen a single corpse or skeleton around in his estate," Jah'riq remarked, gesturing for Hawke to get onto his horse, a sturdy, dark creature he called 'Falamir'.

"And you would know if there was any evidence of him practicing blood magic?" Fenris asked. He knew he sounded harsh, judgmental. Hawke was giving him the look: to be quiet, to cut it with the debate, at least for now. But he couldn't help himself. It didn't sit well with him that magic was left unmanaged in this land, that a mage was allowed to have a home of his own, so far away from any kind of supervision, and free to practice whatever heinous form of magic that pleased him.

"Aye, I would," Jah'riq replied, casually, taking hold of Falamir's reins after he'd helped Hawke into the saddle. "I don't know about this blood magic of yours, but I'm an occasional necromancer myself."

Fenris snapped his head to look at the Khajiit. "And that is allowed?"

Teldryn offered him his horse's rein and then must have thought against it because the Dunmer wordlessly swung himself up onto the saddle. Fenris took hold of Falamir's reins, which Jah'riq held out to him and the party made their way due east of the cottage.

"Necromancy is generally frowned upon," Jah'riq explained. "Too many necromancers are not satisfied with merely raising the dead and their wish for 'fresher' specimens has led to…problems. Kidnappings and grave-robbing. The such."

"And are there no measures taken to control them?" Fenris demanded, ignoring Hawke's quiet admonishment of "Come now, Fenris."

"No places where mages can be kept under guard?" he went on.

He could hear Teldryn scoffing behind him but he kept his focus on the Khajiit — no, the Khajiit _necromancer_.

"Under guard?" Jah'riq exclaimed. "You make it sound like mages are kept in prisons where you come from."

"For good reason," spat Fenris. "Should a mage go out of control here, what happens then? Who takes the responsibility for the dangers they will pose to others?"

When Jah'riq next replied, he ticked off the procedures as if he was reading off a list for the grocer: "Someone reports to the guards and the guards report to the Jarl. The Jarl puts out a bounty and someone takes the bounty and hunts the troublesome mage. If the mage is really, _really_ troublesome, someone goes to the Dark Brotherhood — if they were still around, which they aren't — or the Companions over in Whiterun."

"By then it would have been —"

"Now, Fenris," Hawke cut in, warningly.

"If you take such issue with us _free_ mages," Jah'riq said, not once breaking out of his lackadaisical attitude, "perhaps I ought to have left both of you to the dragon."

Hawke's silence was almost tangible, and Fenris remembered the way the man had been, crumpled, broken, a fraction away from death only moments before. He felt immediately guilty for his outburst.

"I…may seem ungrateful to you," he began. "For that, I apologise."

"Where we came from…" he heard Hawke speak. Looking up, he saw how the man seemed to struggle inwardly with himself. Then with a sad smile, Hawke tried once more: "We came from a land of dark magic. Where even the lowest of mages can enslave the common man and seek to overthrow the Maker Himself. We wish only to escape it."

Jah'riq's ice-blue eyes flicked up to Hawke. The Khajiit never broke his stride, back straight, hands clasped behind him, and with the same impassivity that he wore on his expression, he remarked simply, "And yet you possess it."

Hawke's only reply was a slow nod before he broke into a broad, showman's smile and said, "So, how about a brief travel advisory for this area?"

* * *

"So…your father is an Imperial man?" Hawke asked some time later as the party proceeded on a slow walk down the cobblestone path, the plains to one side of them and the mountain ranges to the other. "And your mother is an…Orc?"

Jah'riq nodded. "Aye. If my real parents were from Elswyr, I do not know. It was my sister, half Orc and half human herself, who found me, floating in a basket along one of the rivers in Cyrodiil late during the Great War." He gave out a chuckle.

He was walking alongside Falamir, though Fenris kept tight hold of the horse's reins. He frankly didn't trust the Khajiit mage and his drawling Dunmer companion, Tedyrn Sero of Solstheim, who had been the one throwing the fireballs past him in the dragon fight.

They were not like the mages back in Kirkwall, who were generally untrained in combat and weak in constitution. These were powerful men, as skilled with the blade as they were with magic. Had it been Anders who was putting Hawke together, he would have needed lyrium potions to keep going. The Khajiit had walked away without a hint of exhaustion.

So far away from Kirkwall and the Imperium, and Fenris was still to find himself surrounded by mages. Fenris couldn't help but think that the Maker enjoyed seeing His creations squirm.

"Well…" Hawke was saying, "I can't say the union produced an ugly man."

Jah'riq threw his head back and laughed. "So…now you deem yourself a judge of Khajiit beauty, eh?"

"You're not bad by Khajiit standards, surely," Hawke went on. "Strong man, covered in battle scars…great hero of Skyrim… All that must come with a legion of admirers. May I ask if any one of them has caught your…attention?"

Fenris tensed at that, while Jah'riq only smiled.

"There is one," he admitted fondly. "Though she was none too impressed by the muscles and the battle scars… But then again, I doubt many priestesses would be if they find you rubbing up against the statuaries of their goddesses in the temples they serve in."

Hawke chuckled.

"After death and battles, and life-saving quests, there is something about being shouted at by the most beautiful priestess you ever laid eyes upon that has you asking all the right questions about life."

"Such as?"

"How much did I drink?" The two men laughed. Teldryn shook his head, amused. Looking up at Hawke, Jah'riq added, "And you're going to meet her when we arrive. So, remember now: behave."

That surprised the two outlanders, for they had not expected the Khajiit to be married. And could priestesses even _be_ married? Hawke and Fenris exchanged glances but neither said a word, only watched as Jah'riq began to take the lead, steps quickening a little, looking back every now and then before slowing down, obligated to make sure his company was still able to keep pace.

He kept the stuttering pace until what looked like a small settlement rose into view: first a single windmill, and then two; large patches of crops — cabbages, leeks, and wheat. There was also a section for a small number of livestock. Surrounding these were a few houses, likely for the owner and a few farmhands. A bald man, burnished from a lifetime of farm work, was leaning against the wooden baluster of one of the farmhouses. He waved to Jah'riq as they passed. Jah'riq raised his hand to return the greeting.

"The neighbours," he explained. "Harvest has been good the past seasons, and Vantus expanded his farm now that he could afford hired hand. Good man."

The second windmill belonged to another farm just beyond the first. It, too, consisted of a number of buildings: a two-storey one that likely housed the farmhands, who were right then tending the crops in their neat, fenced patches; a guard tower, and a largish, single-storey building that Jah'riq explained was the greenhouse where alchemical ingredients were grown.

"It also contains the apiaries that produce the honey for the ale and the mead," he added with a touch of pride and what appeared to be a rather devious smile.

The party cut through the second farm along a small dirt path, and as they did the farmhands — Nords by their appearance — looked up and raised a hand to Jah'riq in greeting. One of them came to the wooden fencing and Jah'riq stopped the party to speak with him. By their conversation, Fenris figured that they were talking about changing the crops when the cold approached — not at all a conversation he would expect from a powerful mage. Looking at the fields, he saw that Heljarchen Farm did not grow the same crops as the one they had passed. Instead, there were gourds, tomatoes, and a grove on the far side saw a few young trees that would be producing fruit by two seasons past. A faint chiming sound called his attention to a small patch of dirt in another far corner and there he saw a few of the glowing weed they called nirnroot, along with a few other crops he couldn't recognise.

He turned to look at Hawke and saw that the man was gazing over at one of the farmhands. "This brings back memories," he heard the man say.

Like the one before it, the farm was self-sufficient with its own livestock. Chickens pecked in the dirt by their coop near the stable and another hand was herding the cows into their pen after a day of grazing.

"Was your family's farm in Lothering like this?" Fenris asked, finding he knew very little about Hawke's life before Kirkwall.

"Ours was smaller. Only one farmstead where my family lived. A few chickens. No cows or goats. Cabbages, carrots, and potatoes mostly." He made an amused sound and added, "Funny how you travel across seas and find that the people of another land plant the same crops as you did, worry about the same weather conditions, if the same harvest would be taken by the frost should you not be fast enough."

Find that magic still exist, that mages still exploit the weak in their quest for power… Fenris wanted to say but didn't.

Two boys came running from behind the greenhouse — one bright-haired and the other darker and much younger. The older one was riding on a broom while his brother chased him, calling for him to stop and let him have a turn. The older boy almost ran into Fenris, but Fenris managed to put his hands out to stop him before the point of the broom-horse could get near anywhere tender. The two boys stared up at him, wide-eyed as if they had never seen an elf before. Fenris figured it was the markings. He tried to smile, but it only caused the boys to back away. The older one took the younger by the hand and ran.

Jah'riq returned to them, apologising, and the party were on their way again.

"You make your own mead?" Hawke asked.

"Mead, ale…and beer too. Nords do not make the ones you can find in my native Cyrodiil, so there is something of a market here." They were going up an incline now and Jah'riq was bent forward a little climbing it, taking big, resolute steps as they did. Fenris found himself having to do the same. "Tell me," Jah'riq continued, "what do you people drink in this…Kirkwall of yours?"

Hawke and Fenris exchanged another glance, the both of them smiling. "Depending on where you go, you get either rat piss or exotic poisons as seasoning."

Jah'riq bellowed out a laugh at this. "Then you need to learn to drink as we do. If there is one thing the people of Skyrim know about, it is their drinks."

Hawke looked over at Fenris. "It's no Aggregio, but I am sure you will find something to drown your notions of the land's scruples in here, eh, Fenris?"

Fenris was about to speak when Jah'riq's home rose into proper view. They had expected a hut or a hovel; at best a glorified campsite. They'd even thought Jah'riq stayed in one of the houses in the farm he owned and had been mystified when he took them past it. What they saw was a manor, an idyllic home of tall angled roofs, multiple wings, and towers with open decks, no doubt with a breathtaking panoramic view of the plains and the distant mountains. A few elks stood grazing up the western slope past another small stable and a woodpile.

Jah'riq pointed out the well that had once been a flour mill, standing to one side of the manor. He also explained how he'd removed the animal pen once the farm was established and added a sitting room that one could enter from the entryway. He'd also expanded the library and the enchanter's tower.

"Did it all myself," he declared with pride.

A small, penned-up herb garden grew against one side of the entryway building, and down from it, a simple longhouse housed the manor's smelter, forge, and smithing equipment. A stern dark-haired woman, worked the forge, while a man, likely her husband, hammered at a chest piece on the armour bench. The chest piece must belong to either one of the three armed people — twin Nords with black-rimmed eyes, and a Dunmer — standing about talking on verandah of the longhouse, bottles in hand.

When one of them spotted the party, he said something to the rest of them and they turned. One of them, the twin with the shorter hair, shouted something that sounded like, " 'O, there, 'binger."

No gates, no walls around the property and no guards, Fenris noted. An easy target for bandits and burglars, if not random wildlife; uncharacteristic for a person of position and power. He thought back to Hawke's own sorely unguarded estate and wondered what it was about these important men, who no doubt would have enemies, and not hiring proper guards for their homes. He also remembered Danarius' estate, watched constantly by his own personal army. Every door within it was fitted with enchanted locks and in the private wing, to which only a few select guards and slaves were allowed, Danarius had kept all kinds of magical artifacts.

Within this private wing, too, Danarius committed some of the most heinous of crimes that no being should be allowed to commit against another. If Danarius owned a farm, he would not deign to discuss something as menial as crops with the farmhands, who were most likely slaves. Surely, he also did not lay down a single brick of the many that made his massive home.

They were met by a man named Markus who took their horses to the stables. The front door of the manor flew open and out stepped another Dunmer, lightly-armoured, face badly scarred and possessing only a single good eye, while the other was concealed behind an eyepatch. He was light-skinned for a Dunmer, with close-cropped hair and a dark, scruffy shadow over the lower part of his face. All Dunmer, both Fenris and Hawke had come to decide, had facial features that made their faces into perpetual scowls, but this particular Dunmer seemed to be wearing the scowl almost as a matter of choice.

He approached when he spotted Jah'riq, but stopped when he saw the outlanders. He gave Fenris a glance before letting his eyes travel over Hawke's form — slowly and deliberately.

Turning to Fenris, he said, his voice a severe rasp, "What manner of mer are you, _n'wah_?"

By then, Fenris already knew enough of the common terms of the land to know that 'mer' referred to 'elf', and that 'mer' were generally considered, by historical precedent, to be of better descent than the human and beast races. It was a welcome subversion, though one he was still coming to terms with. He had no idea what ' _n'wah_ ' meant, having never heard the word spoken in Skyrim before. He knew for certain, however, that the Dunmer was _not_ using it as a term of endearment.

"You have the face of a harlot, boy," the Dunmer went on. "Too clean. Too pretty. Like your mother bent over for too many humans on her way down from hovel to corner club."

Fenris took a step towards the Dunmer, his gauntleted fist already glowing. "Not another word, Dunmer…" he growled.

The Dunmer, unfazed, turned instead to Hawke. Jerking a chin towards the longhouse, he said, "The human-faced elf another time. You, I'll take now. Room in the longhouse, _s'wit_."

Hawke stared at him wide-eyed, knowing his exact meaning. Fenris made a grab for the Dunmer, his glowing fist ready to reach into the other's chest. The Dunmer guessing full well the attack that was coming drew his sword and summoned a fireball into the other. It would have gone badly — two dead elves and a bloody mess in the manor's bare dirt yard — but for the cry of " _Wuld_!", and Jah'riq suddenly coming between them in a rush of air.

"Honestly, Raynes," he said, standing near the Dunmer while distancing him from Fenris with a push on both elves' shoulders.

"Turned in a bounty, while you go trapping, fetcher," Raynes rasped, though he seemed calmed by Jah'riq's presence. From the way his eye held Jah'riq's face — with some anger and some longing — it made one wonder if there had been a history between them.

"Not staying, I take it?" asked Jah'riq amiably.

Raynes continued to hold Jah'riq's eyes with his own and then turned to walk away. "Your woman gave me provisions. Pie, apples… Won't take no for an answer. At least you married well." His scowled deepened, though he made no move to complain about it further. Instead, he went on, "To another bounty. When you decide to do some real work, I will be around, _scrib_."

He all but shouldered Teldryn aside as he passed his fellow Dunmer.

"That one doesn't like me," Teldryn said.

"He doesn't like anyone," Jah'riq put in with a laugh. To Hawke and Fenris, he said, "I apologise… Raynes…" — he fished about for the right words to say, smiling all the while — "let's just say, when he sees something he likes, he does not hesitate to take."

Hawke smiled. "Well, don't we all know someone like that," he remarked, amused. Fenris knew he was talking about Isabela, though he couldn't say he shared the man's amusement in this matter.

* * *

 **Next Chapter: The Uncommon Imperials**


	7. Chapter 7

**Chapter 7: The Uncommon Imperials**

* * *

They were not long in the yard when two small figures came around the western side of the house. One of them was a little Khajiit, eyes big, ears as tall and pointy as an elf. Her fur was grey with streaks of black, and her eyes were of the brightest, glittering green. She wore her dark hair in pigtails and her dress, though of upper class make with its velvet material and shoulder-piece made of bear skin, was scuffed in dirt around the knees and hem.

On spotting Jah'riq, she cried out, "Papa!" and came running to throw herself into Jah'riq's waiting arms.

He took her up in a bear hug and she was small enough that he could throw her into the air once before catching her again. Holding her up against his shoulder, he asked, "Ah! My little Ma'isha! Have you been good now?"

"I helped Mama feed Cannie today," the girl said, and then started clawing at the strap of his satchel. "Did you bring me anything?"

"I might have," Jah'riq admitted. He set her down and asked, "Can you guess what it is?"

"A new dress!"

"You have plenty already."

"For Mister and Missus Rumskin." Seeing Jah'riq's puzzled expression, she added, "My dolls!"

Jah'riq looked at her skeptically. "You named your dolls the Rumskins?"

"Yes!"

"And I suppose Missus Rumskin need a new dress for a party?"

"For the Empress' wedding!"

"Oh?" Jah'riq intoned indulgently. "Then we can't let all those snobbish people make fun of her clothes, can we?"

From his satchel, he drew out a small cloth packet that Ma'isha opened to reveal an exquisite set of miniature clothes, made of fine material and complete with golden embroidery.

"These are perfect! Thanks, Papa!" She gave him a hug. "You're the best!"

She did not seem to notice Hawke and Fenris as they watched the exchange, running past them and into the house, leaving the door open behind her to reveal an entryway that in turn led into a long dining area from where the lilts of a song floated to them from a lute.

"Pay her no mind. She is like that," Jah'riq explained. "She will be bouncing around you, asking questions and offering a share of her snowberry crostata in no time."

Here, Jah'riq turned to the other figure who had been standing a distance away, watching. Or rather, she had been watching the two strangers with a wary, disconcerting stare. She was taller than Ma'isha, likely older or perhaps because she was human, unlike the other. She had a roundish face, flat-nosed and rather rustic, even for a child. She shared her sister's dark hair, out of sheer coincidence rather than biology, but her intelligent eyes were dark and deep set to create the illusion of prominent brow bones below a wide forehead.

Jah'riq opened his arms up and into it, the girl also ran to embrace him around his midriff. Her embrace was tight and for a while she buried her head into her father's torso as if she was giving him a hug for a reluctant goodbye.

Jah'riq bent over in the embrace to press his nose to the top of her head, closing his eyes as he did so. Fenris felt compelled to look away.

When she finally let go, Jah'riq knelt and looking into her face, asked, "Now, what do you think I got you?"

With a sombre air, she answered, "A set of doll's clothes too?"

Jah'riq smiled, smoothing down her hair as he did. "Ma'isha would have them on her Missus Rumskin in no time, I guarantee it." Reaching back into his satchel, he told her, "No, better." He drew out a book and said, "You know that book you've always wanted? About the Ice Prince and the Fire Princess?"

The girl's face brightened up and for a time, she appeared young, as befitted her age. "No way! You found it?"

She reached out to take the book handed to her but before she could, Jah'riq was holding on to one of her hands, turning it over so that the palm faced upwards. There were crinkled lines of blackened skin between which the flesh was a raw pink. Dropping the book, Jah'riq snatched the wrist of the other hand that she was trying to hide behind her and turned to look at the palm as well. It as burnt just the same but a boil was developing in the top of pad.

"Sofie!" Jah'riq cried out in alarm.

Sofie snatched her hands back and hid them behind her back. "I was practicing! I was going to use a healing spell on them!"

Jah'riq took hold of her shoulders. "How many times must I tell you not to practice your destruction magic when I am not at home?"

"But I didn't know you were coming back!"

A look of guilt crossed Jah'riq's features before he gestured for her hands. "Here, let me heal them," he said softly.

"I can take care of myself."

"Sofie."

Reluctantly, she showed her hands and Jah'riq healed them, rubbing the pads of his thumbs over them when he was done.

Sighing, he said, still massaging her hands, "You could have burnt the house down and people could have gotten hurt. Is that what you want?"

Sofie shook her head, eyes welling up in tears.

"Then you will have to be more careful. When I am not around, no conjuration or destruction spells, you understand me, young lady? And I hope you have not been opening...things up again?"

Sofie dropped her head and said almost inaudibly, "Sometimes I can't control it, Papa…"

Hawke caught Fenris' eyes then, and Fenris knew what Hawke was trying to say even without the latter saying it: Don't interfere. It is not our place. A part of him felt he ought to, but he managed to keep his counsel to himself.

"For your sake and for those around you, you will have to learn to do so," Jah'riq told her.

"You won't tell Mama, would you?" Sofie asked. "She will worry."

"Not unless I have to."

Jah'riq straightened up just as another figure came through the open door and into the yard. "Well now," a smooth voice said, "if I'd known that we are having guests, I would have cooked a larger portion."

The men turned to see a woman standing in the threshold of the front door, wearing a simple dress of rough linen and carrying an Argonian babe against her shoulder. She was a woman of strange beauty: pale hair, pale wide-set eyes, small pursed lips, delicate button nose in a soft face. She bore tattoos of soft green on her face that winged from her eyes like second eyebrows. She was a small woman, soon to be dwarfed by even her daughters when they grow up.

Gesturing to her, Jah'riq said with a radiant glow on his face, "And this, gentlemen, is my beautiful wife, Senna."

Senna strolled up to Jah'riq, casually nodding to the rest of the men, and said, "Dear husband, just like you not to send word ahead. I could at least have put on a nicer dress." She handed the baby to him. "I just fed him. He needs to be burped."

"You could be in a sackcloth, my Lady, and still look like a queen," Hawke said smoothly, giving her a proper bow.

Senna looked over to him and smiled, deeply amused. To Jah'riq, she said, "Well, you've outdone yourself, husband. You brought home a charmer."

"Only the best for the most beautiful woman in all of Tamriel. So, how about a kiss hello?"

Senna leaned in and whispered something only he could hear. Whatever it was made him roll a purring, suggestive laugh and he pressed a kiss into her cheek. In that brief moment, it was as if they were the only two in the world. Fenris glanced over at Hawke, but Hawke was gazing out into the distance, across the plains and to the misty line of mountains beyond.

The baby burped then, sending a sour-smelling white mush down the back of Jah'riq's robe. The little one gave a satisfied gurgle and his large, reptilian lids drooped to a close a few times over, though he kept fighting it with a shake of his head, as if he didn't wish to fall asleep just yet. Little Cannie — Light-in-Carnage as his full name turned out to be — had red and black scales that appeared softer than those of the Argonians they had seen and met. His sunset-hued eyes were large, their pupils stretched vertically across them in a pattern of strings-and-knots. His teeth had not grown yet. Knobs grew at consistent intervals from the top of his brow scales, growing in size as they approached the back of his little head, likely to become horns as he grew up. The gurgle he made was a sound somewhere between a human child's gurgle and a high-pitched reverberation from somewhere deep in his belly.

Hawke was clearly intrigued by the child. Fenris watched as, cooing, his man leaned forward to tweak at the little one's nose. Cannie blinked and ran his tiny hands over his short snout as if to hide his head.

Hawke turned to Fenris, eyes alight. "No," Fenris told him.

* * *

In Heljarchen Hall, they passed the sitting room to one side of the entryway on their way in. Hawke managed to catch a glimpse of furniture made of dark wood that didn't match the design of furniture in the rest of the house, wine-coloured cushions, and wall-hangings with symbols on them that he rightly couldn't recognise. There was a vase of flowers on the low table in the centre of the room and what appeared to be a cupboard containing a delicate tea set near the small hearth on the far side. It reminded him a little of the sitting room in his estate back in Kirkwall. He had not felt it on his journey to Skyrim, or while he was exploring the land with Fenris, but being in Jah'riq's home then, he felt a slight roil of homesickness, for Lothering and for Kirkwall.

Especially so when a dog came bounding out from the dining hall to greet Jah'riq as he entered. 'Meeko', as Jah'riq called him, first greeted the Khajiit excitedly before coming round to sniff first at Fenris' feet, then Hawke's. He barked up at Hawke, eyes bright and tail wagging. Unable to help himself, Hawke knelt into a crouch to circle his arms around the dog's neck and rub his head: "Hello there, boy! How's it going?" Meeko was not nearly as big as Eddard; Meeko was leaner, shaggier, and didn't smell quite like a bog the way Eddard always did. Fenris was kneeling too, scratching behind Meeko's ear the way he liked to do to Eddard back at home.

"He likes the two of you," Jah'riq observed.

"I had a dog back at home," Hawke explained. "A warhound that they called a marbari-"

And he could say no more. So he straightened up and followed Jah'riq into the rest of the house.

At the end of the dining hall, they came into a well-stocked kitchen, where pies were baking in the stone oven and a myriad of other dishes were spread on big table in the centre, by which the manor's bard was standing with a bowl of garnish. A door led to what appeared to be a crowded storeroom and trapdoor lay slightly ajar near a cupboard lined with small barrels, closed pots labelled with 'butter', 'honey', and a variety of preserves that were made in preparation for coming winter. Adelaisa, the steward, was in the midst of taking one of the pies out to put a fork through — doing so in a full suit of heavy steel armour. She glanced up at the party only briefly before sliding the pie back in.

"A little more time, mistress," she said to Senna.

"Thank you, Adelaisa. You've been a great help." To Jah'riq, she held her hands out for Cannie. "Give him to me, so that I can wash and change him. I will send Markus down with fresh clothes for your friends."

"We really do not want to impose…" Hawke began.

Cannie had been chewing on his hand when he took it out and slapped it, open-palmed and covered in spittle, right smack in the middle of Fenris' face. Hawke who had been shocked at first, burst out laughing, and it seemed the entire room with him. Carnage let out a gurgle, his stubby tail doing a little wag, pleased with what he'd done. Fenris' reaction was to try and get the taste of spittle off his tongue, and to lash out at someone, anything. He snapped his head to Hawke, glaring at the mage who was by then trying to stifle his laughter behind his own open palm.

He couldn't stay mad for long. He could not fault the child's innocent glee, and Hawke —. He found himself staring at the mage, saw the crinkles in the corner of his grey eyes, and the lines that was beginning to mark his skin. There was real joy in his expression that had been gone for far too long. He could not fault anyone for that.

"And there you have it," Senna spoke up, "every reason to clean up." Rubbing her nose against Cannie's, she cooed, "Isn't Mama right, sweet thing?" Looking back up again, and shifting the youngling to her hip, she said, "I have seen beggars far better dressed. Warm clothes and boots… Dibella knows that Jah'riq hoards all these clothes and armour. What for, I know not."

"I do not hoard," Jah'riq protested, halfway through the trapdoor.

"Oh, yes you do." Senna started to leave and let out a yelp when Jah'riq reached over to pinch her buttocks. "And you too, my husband. You smell like you swam through a swamp and then took a roll in the hay with ten Stormcloak men."

* * *

Down in the basement Jah'riq was still laughing. "She has a mouth on her sometimes, but she means nothing by it." He paused, gave himself to a thought, and then said, "And that bottom on her…" Turning to Hawke, he asked, "You would know a thing or two about a woman's bottom? Or, do you solely prefer the other half?"

Hawke smiled. "A thing or two perhaps…but let's just say, the other half makes for better company."

"Preference for strong packages, eh?" Jah'riq laughed. "I have known those…on the occasion."

"Oh?"

"Not now, of course." Jah'riq waved them over, past the shrine base and into another room that had a fire burning in a small stove. "But in the past — well, as the saying goes, a cat does stray before he finds his life mate."

"Raynes?"

"One of them."

The basement room had a sturdy cot set up near the black stove, with throws of pelt as covers and a rolled up deer hide to act as a pillow. It was a large room and the closest thing to a mage's quarters that Fenris had seen so far: a round table upon which sat an alembic, a mortar and pestle, retort and calcinator; rows of shelves with urns and clear jars of ingredients; a box in a corner was ice cold when he chanced to touch it — he didn't care to know what needed to be kept cold inside. A weapons rack lined one wall, holding rows of staves and enchanted swords that seemed to be of demon's make, and lined beside it were armour racks with a number of well-crafted sets that even he had to envy.

Fenris was examining a black-and-red set of armour, with the spikes it sported on its pauldrons, gauntlets, and beaked helm, as Jah'riq explained how the basement used to contain his smithing equipment before the longhouse was built and the smiths were hired.

"Did those smiths forge these for you?" asked Hawke as Fenris touched a hand to the sharp talons that were the gauntlet's fingers.

"The armour you see here are almost forged by my own hands. That one," he indicated the one Fenris was admiring so, "is the Daedric set, one of my most priced pieces."

Fenris drew his hand away, sharply. The armour reeked of magic and not the kind that came from the enchantments folded into it.

"Tell me if I am mistaken, but these pieces seemed to be enchanted. How do you enchant your items without lyrium or…" Hawke trailed off. Fenris knew he was thinking of Sandal and the Tranquil, those of simple mind who were not affected by the sheer volume of lyrium required to work an enchantment into a weapon, armour, or, he thought with disdain, a person.

"I suspect will not like it," Jah'riq replied, picking out jars and taking ingredients from out of them and into a bowl. "It requires souls trapped in soul gems. If you ever know where those souls end up, it takes a lot of stomach to actually carry out any kind of enchantment after that."

"Which you do, very easily it would seem," Fenris remarked. He stalked over to where the Khajiit was pounding some ingredients with the pestle. "What is that?" he demanded. "What are you giving him?"

"First a poultice for the pain," Jah'riq explained, "and then a strong curative."

Fenris eyed the bowl with the other ingredients. There was a mudcrab's claw in it and a few spoons of purplish dust. "What sort of curative?" he asked suspiciously.

At this point, Jah'riq ignored him and went over to Hawke, telling him to undress. Hawke hesitated at first and then did so, stripping down to his loincloth.

Jah'riq gave him a once over that made Fenris want to claw the Khajiit's eyes out, before saying, "As, I suspected. You haven't been to any settlements of late, have you?"

"How do you know that?" Hawke asked, sitting back down on the cot.

Jah'riq chuckled.

"Someone would have told you that you didn't look too well." Returning to the alchemy table, he went on, scraping the poultice out into another bowl, and then proceeding to add the other ingredients into the mortar. "I am surprised you can still walk with that advanced stage of Rockjoint, my friend."

And Fenris saw it then, how Hawke's joints — namely, his ankles and knees — were swollen to the point of actually appearing like rocks. The feeling was like a fist in the gut: how could he not have noticed it before? Hawke had given no indication that he was ill — no limp in his walk, no pain in his countenance.

Fenris saw then that even in the orange light of the basement, Hawke was pale, his face gaunt even with the growing beard and the long, loosely worn hair to frame it.

Above them, the whole hall seemed to have taken up song while he could only stare at the man he cared so much for, wasting away with every false smile he deigned to put on.

 _~Ooooooooh, there once was a hero named Ragnar the Red_

 _Who came riding to Whiterun from ole Roriksteeeeeeeaaaaaad…~_

* * *

"Why didn't you tell me you were feeling ill?" Fenris asked quietly when they were alone.

Senna had insisted that they stay the night after the riotous evening meal. The manor had a room with spare beds up in the attic. There were other rooms in the spacious attic, "for the steward, housecarl, and bard", Senna explained as she patted one of the spare beds down after tucking in the sheets and throwing on the green cover. She left after letting them know where the washbasin and chamberpots were, and that she had placed a fresh change of clothes on the chest outside for them. The bard was still awake, strumming a slow tune on her lute, and somewhere the housecarl, steward, and Teldryn continued to talk over mugs of warm mead.

Hawke blew out the candle and Fenris could hear him climb into his bed and under the covers.

"I didn't want you to worry."

"And you dropping dead would be better?" Fenris hissed, still continuing to sit on his bed.

"No one dies from a case of Rockjoint."

"So now you're an expert in this land's diseases?"

It was strange, no, it felt wrong to be in separate beds after nights of sharing a bedroll. Hawke didn't reply. With an irritated 'tch', Fenris pulled the cover that Senna had painstakingly carried up the attic steps and then spread out for him, and stalked over to Hawke's bed.

"There isn't any space," Hawke protested.

"Then make one."

Hawke chuckled in the dark. Fenris found space enough on the bed to sleep on his side, spooned against Hawke and his enveloping warmth.

Hawke lay still for a while before wrapping his arm around Fenris' middle, pulling him closer. Fenris felt the man's bearded jaw against the back of his neck where his growing white hair had fallen away to expose it. Hawke's breath still smelled of the juniper mead Jah'riq had served at the table. There was a time when he didn't like the feel of a man's unshaven jaw against his skin. It reminded him too much of Danarius, of what his old master used to do to him. But when he learnt the contours of Hawke's face, knew the sharp chin and wide nose, broken from an old fight, and the sweep of the man's long eyelashes; when he could map out the ridges of scars, there wasn't a night that didn't feel lonely when he didn't have all of that with him.

"I don't know what I would do without you," Hawke murmured sleepily, pressing a kiss into his neck.

Fenris didn't reply, listening instead to the sound of the man's breathing as he fell asleep.

* * *

 **Next chapter: Mage Child**


	8. Chapter 8

**Chapter 8: Mage Child**

* * *

In the morning, Hawke was not there. Fenris woke up to the missing weight of an arm over his middle and a similar absence of an angled knee between his own. He shot up in bed and automatically reached for his sword, only to find that it was not there. A bolt of panic ran him through before he remembered then how his sword had shattered during the fight with the dragon. The bottom half that remained was still sheathed in the scabbard, lying by their packs. The _Blade of Mercy_ was a Tevinter weapon and he had been adverse to carrying it, but it had also been a gift from Hawke and so he'd decided to wield it for its irony.

He saw that the other bed was made and the clothes that Senna had selected for him lay folded on top of it. Throwing himself out of bed, he freshened up with the water from a jug by a dwemer washbasin and dressed in the heavy tunic and pants that must once belong to someone slender and very close to his height. He remembered Hawke's very frugal habit of putting on robes he'd pulled off other mages and wondered if Jah'riq was the same. His hair had grown long over the course of the journey and he tied it back with a spare leather strip that had been be thoughtfully provided.

There was a murmur coming from somewhere in the house, with peaks and falls like a subtle, disconcerting earthquake. A peek into the kitchen showed Oriella, the bard, putting away the dishes. She stared at him when he looked in and then ducked her head blushing.

Voices from the sitting room drew his attention while he was crossing the entryway: an argument that was trying its best not to be too loud and failing at points. Senna stood by the cupboard with the tea set, a hand on the nearby window sill. Jah'riq was by the empty hearth.

"—and so you would take the word of a bloody elf?" Senna was demanding.

Fenris' steps halted.

"After the war you've just fought? You think sending Sofie over to the Psijics in the Summerset Isles is a good idea?"

The argument must have gone on for a while and Senna was clearly vexed, appearing as if she was damn near shattering all of the glittering porcelain on display. "All because of a few bad dreams that she's had? Mages here can handle themselves well enough with just the College in Winterhold. I don't see why she cannot be educated the same."

"Because it wouldn't be enough," Jah'riq argued. "Should Sofie lose control, people could get hurt, the world may even fall into collapse. It is for her own good as much as it is for our family. I have worked with the Psijics before in a number of matters, and they take the preservation of rare magical artifacts very seriously. So—"

"SOFIE IS _NOT_ AN ARTIFACT!" Senna roared, stepping up to her husband, hands clenched into fists by her sides, teeth bared up at a man more than a head taller than her. "She's our _daughter_."

Drawing away, Senna collected herself and only gazed at her husband with a pained, disbelieving expression. When she next spoke, her voice was but a whisper: "Or have you forgotten that?"

Jah'riq considered her, equally pained. Then he replied quietly, "No, of course not."

"If Sofie needs to seek guidance, so she should," Senna continued, "but not until she is ready and not until she truly seeks it. Right now, she is still only a child and the one thing she needs more than anything is her father! If you would only spend more time with her…with us!"

She drew in a deep breath. Finally, she shook her head, slowly. "Sometimes I wonder…"

Jah'riq was about to lower himself into a chair when he shot up again. "Senna —"

"Sometimes I wonder if all that time you were away from home," Senna went on, as if she hadn't heard, "sometimes I wonder if you were faithful to us. If all this time, while I turn in to an empty bed pining for you…" — Jah'riq approached, saying her name again, but she only kept on, voice escalating — "you were out there, plowing some whore in the back rooms of a tavern!"

"Senna, love, I wouldn't —"

Jah'riq made to take hold of her as she crossed the room to exit it. Fighting his hands off, she cried, "No, don't! Don't touch me! Don't—"

She stopped and Fenris realised that they were staring at him, and that he was standing there, just beyond the threshold. Jah'riq turned away sat down in the nearest chair and rested his mouth on interlaced fingers. Senna whispered an apology to Fenris and said something about checking on the baby. Fenris stood nailed to the floor, looking on as Jah'riq took care not to meet his eyes while he listened to the sound of Senna's footsteps running up the stairs, then to the slam of couple's bedroom door.

Finally, he stammered, "I…I should go and find Hawke…" before he, too, took his leave.

Only he didn't leave the house. Instead, he went deeper into it, not knowing why, and found himself in the first floor of the library that doubled as a reading room. He saw Sofie standing in the far corner, facing one bookshelf, the book she held opened to a page though it was clear that she wasn't reading. She appeared to be listening and looked up when Fenris walked over to the adjacent bookshelf.

They went about it in silence. Fenris didn't know how to react, what to say to a child who was cursed with magic and so faced the prospects of being sent to, from what he'd gathered, Tamriel's version of the Circle.

"Hello," he heard her say tentatively behind him.

"Greetings," he replied.

"I am sorry you had to hear that," Sofie went on. "You are a guest."

"It is all right."

"Mama and Papa fight about me whenever he comes home," he heard Sofie whisper behind him.

Fenris turned and saw only her back. She still had not turned a single page.

"Papa thinks I should be sent away, and Mama thinks he should be home more."

"I…uh…"

"I wish I wasn't born with magic. But Mama said no one has ever been punished for being born with what the gods gave them."

How common an argument, thought Fenris, and one Hawke had said his sister had made daily in her lifetime.

"I heard you have dreams?" he could only ask.

"Yes."

"Do demons come to you in them?"

Sofie turned to look at him. "Do demons take on the form of people?"

"They can. That is how they lure mages and possess them."

Sofie's eyes grew wide at that. "But why mages?"

"Mages…have a connection to the dream world, so it's easier for demons to find them."

"And what happens when a demon find a mage and possess them?"

"They become…" Fenris hesitated. He'd never believed in coddling children. He'd always believed that parents would only pay for their weaknesses if they continued to protect their magic-cursed children and hid them from the Circle. Yet, now that he was confronted with a 'magic-cursed' child, a child who was upset about her parents fighting, it wasn't so easy to speak the ugly truth.

"They become…what we call abominations," he finished. It felt difficult, heavy, and he stood there in a well of guilt, feeling as if he'd held the girl's heart in his hand and then proceeded to crush it. He wondered how Hawke could do it: deliver bad news, and then still find something, anything to say to set minds at ease.

"Will Mister Hawke become an abomination some day?"

And the world stopped for just a brief moment. In that moment, Fenris remembered a murmured conversation between them, at Hawke's mansion, their bodies slicked in perspiration after a lovemaking session. Fenris was spent — the need deep in his belly sated, satisfied — and lay sprawled on his front, fast falling asleep with the cover over only one leg. Hawke came back, still gloriously naked, from pouring himself a drink, though instead of climbing into bed, like he always did, he sat on the edge of it. Fenris only glanced one-eyed at him. Hawke had reached back to run the back of a single finger down Fenris' back. Wordlessly, he proceeded to trace every scar, every sinew, avoiding the markings when he could.

"Should I ever become an abomination," Hawke murmured, not once lifting his finger, "you will strike me down, wouldn't you, Fenris?"

Sleep-addled and lulled by Hawke's touch, Fenris had only replied, "Don't be a fool, mage. You will never become an abomination."

He remembered Hawke's chuckle. He climbed over Fenris and threw himself into bed, struggling to remove the cover from beneath them so that he could draw it up.

The familiar arm around his middle. The angle of knee. Fenris turned onto his back and Hawke was forced to change his position. They both bounced a little on the mattresses, adjusting to each other's changes.

"You're strong, Hawke," he said.

"But if I do," Hawke insisted, "do not hesitate to reach in and rip my heart out."

Back in the library, Fenris found that he could only stare at Sofie. Turning to the bookshelf, he asked her instead, "Do you like books?"

"I do," Sofie replied. "I like the ones with stories about heroes and queens. I don't really understand the ones about mages and daedra. Do _you_ like books?"

Fenris nodded slowly.

"What books are you looking for? Papa says our collection is second only to the one in Winterhold."

Fenris peered up at the shelves, remembering the towering ones in Hawke's estate, where the topmost shelf could be accessed by a long ladder.

"Do you have books on elven history?" he asked.

"Which one? We have history books on Valenwood, Morrowind, the Summerset Isles… Even a few on the Snow Elves that used to live here in Skyrim before the Nords came. We also have some on the early elves, the Chimer and their war with the Nedes... How they made the Brothers of Strife..."

"Um…Morrowind, perhaps."

"Sure." And she led him to another bookshelf where he helped her reach for a few of the topmost books.

* * *

Later, Fenris was wandering the estate's grounds; making his way first to the longhouse, where the smith and her husband were already at work, repairing the armour for a travelling adventurer. A courier ran past him as he turned the corner at the well, shouting a, "Can't stop. Letters to deliver," as he did so. Ma'isha called out a cheery greeting of "Hey, mister!" that he awkwardly returned when she spotted him while playing with the two boys he'd met at the farm.

He soon found himself on the deck at the back of the house, upon which an arrangement of tables, chairs, and counters with a sampling of wine sat under an arbour strung with vines and bright flowers. He was looking out at the view in the distance, wondering at the sanity of the Khajiit for building his family home so close to a giant's rest, when he spotted Hawke standing just below. He was about to join the man, when Jah'riq came up the incline with Gregor. On spotting Hawke, the Khajiit took leave of his housecarl and joined the man.

"I hope you slept well?" Jah'riq was heard asking.

"Very," Hawke replied. He was wearing a pale shirt, brown trousers tucked into leather boots. When he turned his face, Fenris saw that he'd trimmed his beard, so that it was cropped close to his chin and jaw again. His long dark hair was worn loose, but with the addition of small braids that he'd seen some of the Nord men sport. With his dark skin and light eyes, and the single gold earring he'd recently took to wearing, Hawke was bearing more and more of the land's rugged texture on him. So many had thought he was one of the Redguards from Hammerfell. Fenris couldn't complain. The look suited him.

"It feels good to not be afraid of your sleeping mind," added Hawke.

Jah'riq made a sound, as if asking for clarification. Fenris listened as Hawke told him about the mage's connection to the Fade. Lyrium. Possesions. Darkspawn and the Blights — mages' part in one that led to the other. Andraste and the injustices of the Imperium. And so the rationale of the Circles of Magi in Thedas. On the roll and drunk on release, Hawke told the Khajiit about the battle of the Gallows: Anders' death and the choice he had to make between the mages and the people.

It was a story of twin shackles: fear and regret. Nowhere in it was a smile though the man who told it smiled a lot.

Jah'riq made no sound as it was told; only listened, his eyes gazing out to the giant's rest, back straight, and arms crossed.

"Which is why we are here," Hawke said at the end of it. He sighed and then coughed out a laugh. "Champion of Kirkwall…" he added mockingly. "Look at me now. A burden and a fool."

Fenris thought Jah'riq, with his militant pose that had become so oddly familiar, would have some advice to give, something sagely to say. Instead, he only put in smoothly, "Admitting it is a good start."

Fenris smiled. Bastard, he couldn't help but think.

A sound made him turn and he saw Senna standing just outside the back door of the manor. She held his stare for a moment before speaking, "I am heading down to the farm to pull out the potatoes before the ground gets too hard. I could use some help, so come along."

It was more of a command than a request, and Fenris didn't think it was healthy to refuse.

Senna took him through the children's room and then down across the rest of the house. They didn't speak until they were descending the long slope to Heljarchen Farm. The wind was chilly though the weather was clear and the sun bright. Senna had her hair pushed up into a farm-woman's hat and a woollen stole around her neck and shoulders. In her coarse dress and her boots, nothing but the intricate gold-and-sapphire ring she wore on her finger indicated that she was the wife of someone important.

"About what you heard this morning…" Senna began after staring sternly ahead of her for a while, "I…apologise. But,"— she considered it, then gave a resigned sigh — "you are not seeing the Donton family at our best. It has been hard for us, since —"

She cut herself off. It didn't look like she was about to continue.

"Perhaps…your husband has the right of it."

He sensed her turning her head to look at him, though she didn't say a word. So, he tried: to educate, to rationalise. He began with the Circle of Magi, in Kirkwall and as Hawke had told him about the one in Ferelden. He mentioned Merrill's blood magic, what it had cost her, and Anders' spirit possession. He went on to tell her about Tevinter, the magisters and what they'd done to the world, to the notion of sentient being — on the roll and high on release, he even told her about what Danarius did to him.

"So the alternative is nothing to gaze upon," he all but bit out at the end, "for," — he found himself repeating words from long ago; round and round he was always going, but it was only because the worlds never seemed to change —

"What has magic touched that it doesn't spoil?"

That was when Senna suddenly stopped and snapped her head to look at him. Sharply, she said, "You are out of line."

And it was then that he realised it was someone's child he was talking about.

Fenris looked down into the fierce pale eyes of the petite woman before him and felt the need to duck his head. "I…am sorry. I didn't —"

She continued for the farm and Fenris followed. They didn't speak until they were in the patch of potatoes. By the small number of the said crop, he figured that the family only grew it for themselves rather than for the markets. "Jah'riq makes health potions using the wheat he buys from Loreius," Senna explained, as if their earlier argument had not happened. "But I prefer to have my own potatoes."

"I…see…" Fenris tried.

Senna spoke briefly to one of the farmhands, a sturdy Nord woman, with blond hair and likely strong enough to lift a cow, before returning to him. He stood by awkwardly as the Breton, diminutive when compared to his lanky height and those of the people in her household, went for a small shovel and started digging it into the soil.

"The ground here is hard," Senna explained as she drove the shovel down in a cutting motion, making a circle around the visible plant, "unlike the kind of ground they are lucky enough to have down the road in Rorikstead. Pulling out the potatoes the wrong way will break it at the root below the ground, making it harder to get the tubers out. Though, this is nothing compared to the Reach."

Glancing up, she saw that Fenris didn't know where that was, so she added, "That is the hold in which Markath is the capital. The ground there is rocky."

"You seem to know a lot about farming," Fenris said, fishing about for conversation.

"I grew up in a farm before bandits took me at fourteen…" She stopped; peered up at Fenris. "There are mages as there are men."

"What do you mean?"

"There are men as there are women. There are good men, bad men; men capable of ambition, erudition, and of committing the greatest acts of kindness, selflessness. Of cruelty and love."

"But if we are to give every mage the benefit of a doubt, any one could slip through and in his quest for power justify any number of injustice —"

Senna's expression on him was almost woeful. "That is true. Mages can be dangerous," she cut in. "But if your people keep seeing every mage as a danger even before their actions could speak for their character, when will it stop? For any one man to have power over so _many_ lives he can extinguish with one word, one rite of annulment?" When Fenris couldn't answer her, Senna turned away for a moment, considering the farm and the plains that stretched beyond it.

"If someone comes along and says Hawke needs to be locked away," she said suddenly, "would you let him go, even if in your heart of hearts you know what they say is true?"

"If it comes to that…" Fenris began and found that he couldn't continue.

Senna waited for him to do so, and when he didn't, she said, "So, you understand how hard it must be for us to let Sofie go. If it is a folly, it is ours to bear. It is bad enough that the Altmer is still out there telling the Nords of this land who they should or should not worship. But my daughter is _not_ an object they can keep in a vault. No man, mer, or beast should think himself the master of her. As long as there is breath in my body, I will not allow it."

Fenris smiled, feeling suddenly humbled. "In that, at least, I can be in agreement of…"

"Exactly. And never once should you presume otherwise."

Senna paused when Ma'isha came running up to show her a flower wreath she'd just made. Senna stooped down a little to let Ma'isha crown her with it. She straightened up as the boys called out to the girl, telling her they found 'a snow centurion'. It was then that Fenris noticed the rabbit that had been following closely at Ma'isha's feet, and only because she bent down to pick it up with a, "Come on, Cotton. Let's go kill a centurion!"

"Keep within sight of the house, you hear?" Senna shouted up to her. To Fenris, she said, "Grab that shovel by the greenhouse and help me with the other potatoes."

"I…uh…I don't know how…"

Placing a hand on her hip, Senna cocked her head and raised a brow at him. "And so, you cannot try to learn something new?"

He turned and got the shovel. Senna showed him how to do it once and the next thing he knew, she was leaving him to it with the instructions to bring every single tuber he dug up to the manor when he was done. Shovel in hand, his face was a mask of shock as he watched her saunter off towards the house. He couldn't decide if it was a lesson or punishment that she abandoned him, only that her instructions had left him as surely as the strong wind could take a floating feather.

A laugh made him turn and he saw one of the farmhands watching him. Scowling, he turned back and dug the end of the shovel deep into the ground, but the farmhand came up to him, still amused. "Plucked you from her husband's retinue, marched you here, and gave you a lecture, did she? She does that to her children too, when they are being particularly difficult. Somehow, it always makes them docile after."

"Blood and battle is all I've ever known," Fenris admitted.

"And I'll bet you, Mistress Senna knows that too. Come on, I'll help you."

* * *

 **Next Chapter: Adventuring!**


	9. Chapter 9

**Chapter 9: Adventuring!**

* * *

Hawke was in the dining hall with the manor's steward, twins, Vilkas and Farkas, Teldryn, and Athis, the other Dunmer they'd seen earlier at the longhouse. He met Hawke's eyes as he came in with the sack of potatoes. To the man's raised brows, he only glowered and made his way to the kitchen where he was directed to put the potatoes down by a barrel in the corner before he could join them at the table.

"So, you are both headed to Whiterun, now?" asked Vilkas.

The morning meal had already been decimated and they were all sitting around with tankards of ale or mead.

"Yes," Hawke told him. "We figured that it would be the best place for us to find work."

"What kind of work are you looking for exactly?" Farkas asked. Fenris had taken a liking to the man after the first time they spoke. Farkas was a man of simple tastes and philosophy: 'give me a sword and point me in the direction of enemies' and 'leave the politics to the Jarls because they need to find things to do anyway'. They'd even spoken at great length about swords, to which Hawke listened in at one point, appearing rather amused.

"We have not figured that out yet," Hawke said uncertainly. Gesturing over at Fenris, he added, "Though Fenris here is rather keen on joining the Fighter's Guild that we heard has their headquarters there."

To this Farkas, Vilkas, and Athis laughed.

"There are no Fighter's Guild here in Skyrim," Vilkas put in. "The esteemed company you see before you,"— he gestured quickly towards his brother and the other Dunmer — "we are but four of the Companions of Jorrvaskr. No politics, or magic, or underhanded sneaking. We do our best to uphold the legacy of Ysgramor. To bear his good name such that it never be forgotten, and will always be spoken with reverence."

Hawke looked over at Fenris, expecting the elf to say something about that, but Fenris kept his counsel to himself.

Fenris was about to ask about the admission when Athis spoke up, "You don't look like much. Do you even have the arm to lift a dagger?"

Fenris glared over at the man. How was it that every Dunmer he met on this side of Skyrim prove to be so unlikable?

He heard Hawke chuckle. "He is stronger than he looks. Believe me when I say that when it comes down to it, he handles his sword…" — here he looked over at Fenris with the slightest curve of a knowing smile — "very, very well."

Fenris darted eyes to the company at the table and then frowned warningly at the man. Thankfully, no one seemed to get the euphemism.

Vilkas said, "We can pit you against someone and see if you have what it takes, but, it is not for me to decide. That will be up to the Harbinger."

And here he turned to Jah'riq sitting at the end of the table nearest to the entryway door, who'd been quiet throughout the conversation, watching Fenris with careful consideration. There it was again: that intuitive scrutiny from when they first met. Silence descended at the table as the three Companions turned to the Harbinger.

Finally, Jah'riq spoke up, "I can vouch for his fighting abilities."

That came as a surprise to Fenris. He didn't think he was on particularly good terms with the Khajiit after their brief spate about mages near Drelas' Cottage.

"Anything else, however…" Jah'riq paused, considering something and then exchanging a glance with Teldryn Sero who sat at the far end of the table, across from him. Decidedly, he continued, "I have a task for you. A simple retrieval, but I believe you can handle it."

"Will he be going with a Shield-Brother?" Farkas asked.

"Not yet, my friend. He will be going with Teldryn; alone."

Intonations of scepticism rippled through the trio of Companions.

"No," Fenris cut in. "I will go with Hawke."

"It's all right, Fenris." He snapped his head to look at the man and saw him smiling gently from across the table. "Go with Teldryn. I am still recovering from my Rockjoint after all."

When he turned his gaze to the indolent Solstheim Dunmer, the other only grinned and said, "Looks like we have to be friends, Bosmer."

* * *

The click of yet another lockpick breaking drew a hiss of frustration from Fenris' clenched teeth.

"Quickly," Teldyrn whispered from where he stood. "The guard is coming round again."

"This is pointless!" Fenris snapped in a returning whisper. "I am no thief!"

Teldryn shrugged. He appeared a strange thing in full armour, with its shell-like plates and goggle eyes. "It is the only way we can get the key."

"And that cat gave us this quest knowing that neither of us could pick a lock?"

"I thought _you_ could pick a lock."

"I don't pick locks."

"I take it, your man does all the picking then?" Fenris didn't need to see it, but he knew the Dunmer was grinning from within his helmet. "We are alike like that. Jah'riq is better with his hands too."

"Silence, Dunmer!"

Teldryn was about to come fighting back with a retort, but a voice, heavily textured with the accents of the land cried out from around the corner: "You there! Stop what you're doing!"

Fenris was about to make a break for it. Teldryn was already climbing over the fence to get into the back garden of the house and escape into the marshland thickets of Morthal. He could hear the Dunmer hissing, "Come on, run, you bloody _n'wah_!" but the guard was already onto him, battleaxe drawn.

"You have committed crimes against Skyrim and her people," he began. "What say you in your defense?"

The Morthal night was deathly dark, but the guard must have seen him in the light from the lantern that was hanging from his belt — the light he'd stupidly forgotten to dim. The quest, according to Jah'riq, was supposed to be simple: get into a specified house, find a key from a strongbox on the bedside stand, and then make for a cave to retrieve an artifact called, 'The Unlucky Rabbit's Foot', for a man who'd apparently been consorting with some Daedra named Clavicus Vile. Fenris didn't think a man who had been consorting with demons ought to be helped in any way and he was frankly suspicious about the quest, but there was something in the way Jah'riq had looked at him that made him feel that the completion of this task was a means of proving himself worthy. Worthy of what, he couldn't say for sure.

Then there was also the way Hawke was looking at him from across the table — that sense of hope emanating from his very being. He couldn't help but think something was wrong with the man. It all felt very ominous, like dark clouds in the sky signalling the arrival of one of Skyrim's brutal snowy winds.

Hawke had snuck a kiss as he climbed into the back of the carriage that was to take him to Morthal. His lips still felt it as he watched the man diminish as the carriage left the manor. Apart from ominous, it had all felt wrong. Fronts felt empty without the surety of Hawke's back and the staff that lay strapped across it, sheathed in stitched sackcloth. Of late, Hawke had been keeping back, staying in the shadows and out of the frontlines. Fights were disorienting without the strategic commands, and dull without the competition. Some days he kept count in his head — Fenris, ten; Hawke, eight — though it didn't quite feel the same.

At one point in the carriage, he'd drawn out the borrowed sword he was to use. He'd picked it out of a pile from the weapons chest of Jah'riq's storeroom. Farkas had recommended good steel but he'd gone for dragonbone instead because he remembered the way the dragon destroyed the Tevinter blade he carried and swore he would never let himself be so disarmed again. However, between the dragonbone greatsword and the full set of steel armour, he had never felt so weighed down in his entire existence as a fighter.

"I am on a quest for Jah'riq Donton," Fenris said sternly to the guard. "Step aside."

Another guard had come to join the first, and they both guffawed at that. "Oh-hoh, and I am on a quest for a lusty Argonian maid with big, packing tits. Now, pay the fine of 215 septims, or rot in jail. Your choice."

"I don't have —"

"Hold the boats, lads," a smooth voice interrupted him. Looking back, Fenris saw a dark-clad figure slink out of the shadows, Teldryn following close behind him. He watched as the man held a whispered conversation with the guard. The clink of a coin purse exchanging hands was unmistakable in the night's quiet.

"Right, now move along," the guard snapped, "before you get us into trouble."

"I can't —"

The dark-clad man clapped Fenris on the shoulder and turned him around, forcing him to go along with him.

Fenris shrugged the man's hand off and started to turn back for the house. "I need that key," he growled.

The man chuckled. Fenris couldn't see his face for the night and the hood that was drawn low over his brow. "I was told that you'd be a piece of work…" He drew something from a pocket of his bandolier and tossed it to Fenris. It was a key, sturdy though rough and rusted. "Here ya go, lad. Was told you'd need some help and be glad you didn't need to go in there anyway."

"Why not?"

"Pair of vampires," the man explained, "likely associates of the one that was killed here a few years back." He shook his head, perhaps even gave a little shudder. "Nasty things going on in there. Not a surprise, given the reputation of this area."

"And you let them walk away?" Fenris demanded, halfway turning to once more return to the house.

"Whoa there, lad,"— the man grabbed hold of his shoulders and turned him back around — "I am a thief, not an assassin, and _definitely_ not a vampire-hunter. They are out hunting right now —"

"— for the blood of others —" Fenris snapped, trying to turn back.

"— but I can assure you that the Dawnguard are already on it. Now, off to Bloodsmen Cave with you."

"How —"

It was no more than a whisper of air, on footing lighter than a tundra cotton being carried in the breeze, but the last thing he saw of the man was a glimpse of a pattern on the shoulder pad of the bandolier, of red hair and dusting on chin when the light from a lantern chanced to fall on a bit of wall against a shadowed house. He turned to Teldryn for answers, but the Dunmer was already crashing away into the marshes, beckoning him to follow.

* * *

Fenris did not know what to make of the quest the further he progressed into it: stealing keys from vampires, chancing to meet a thief who helped him retrieve it, and some members of the Dawnguard, a guild of vampire-hunters, to hunt down the bloodsuckers that should have been his to hunt in the first place. He didn't know how he felt about being pitted against vampires. He had not met one while travelling the land with Hawke, but from what little Teldryn would tell him, they were vicious killers and powerful necromancers. From what he also gathered, the Khajiit mage was known to spare none whenever he came across them.

"Lost a lot of good friends to them," Teldryn explained as they picked their way through the lush greenery east of Alchemist's Shack, "good people…There was one, though…Serana."

"And why would he spare one out of many?"

Teldyrn shrugged. "There will always be an exception."

Fenris stared at Teldryn, thinking of Hawke, and his father and sister—the two other mage Hawkes that he never got the chance to meet.

"Eyes front, _s'wit_ ," Teldryn instructed. "Bear, then Bloodsmen Cave, right past it."

Fenris reached back for his blade.

"Save it," he heard Teldryn say. Looking over, he saw that the Dunmer was crouched low in the undergrowth.

"A swordsman and a mage make bad sneaks, Dunmer," Fenris pointed out drily.

"A mage throws grand fireballs at your face and then try to stick you with the pointy end of their letter openers when you get too close. I can actually just slice you with this sword of mine faster than you draw yours. Know the difference, _n'wah_."

Fenris chuckled at that. Crouching down low beside the Dunmer, he returned with, "You know, I might actually start to like you."

Teldryn only gave an amused grunt.

They rounded the sleeping bear in silence, swooping behind the cover of trees and a rocky outcrop when they were sure that they were a good distance away from the beast. The forest around the area was denser than in any other locations around Skyrim. Among greenery, mountain flowers grew and above them flitted butterflies in the quiet buzz of an idyllic atmosphere. Fenris could not help looking up once or twice, to see how blue the sky could get and how fresh the air could be.

There seemed to be not a hint of lyrium in this land. Some days he could even forget about the markings that coursed over and under his skin. He wondered if the land's natural make was also affecting Hawke's connection to the Fade.

At one point, Teldyrn absently pointed up the nearby mountain and told him of High Hrothgar that stood beyond the clouds. "Some Nords make the trip up the 7000 steps as a pilgrimage. It might be a worthy trip to make. Jah'riq did it. I can't say I see the point."

They came to the cave that had been marked on the map. By the entrance was a makeshift table made out of an old tree stump with the remnants of a noon day meal still upon it, two standing torches and some burial urns. There were splatters of blood on the ground, leading into the cave. A few bloodied bones, unmistakably of either man or mer origins, told them of death beyond the entering void.

"Either vampires or warlocks," Teldryn decided. He peered into the darkness and his scowl deepened. "Vampires are wretched beings. Warlocks practice all sorts of foul sorcery. Either way, we should proceed with caution." Turning to Fenris, he said with a hint of a sudden grin, "This is your quest, _n'wah_. I suggest you take the lead."

Fenris snapped his eyes over to the Dunmer. Words, _I have never led before. I don_ _'t know how,_ were about to spill from his lips—

—but they did not.

"The cave is a nest of vampires and their thralls. A Breton merchant supply caravan has been attacked recently, and I dare say that is the remains of one of the caravaneers."

The pair turned at the sound of the voice; a woman in the armour of the ancient Nords, red hair framing rough a green-clawed face, stepped out from the camouflage of trees and thickets. She had a predatory air about her and the way she took in her surroundings—stalking, watching, sensing—explained a little of what he'd sensed when in Jah'riq's presence, only wilder, stronger.

"Aela," Teldryn addressed, also by way of introduction, "the Huntress."

Aela considered Fenris before she said, "I was told that you might be here. If everything that is said about you is true, we may hunt together some day."

Without waiting for his reply, she turned her attention to the cave. "I seek a totem within. The Harbinger said you could be of help seeing how our goals lead us down the same path."

There was a pause and Fenris realised that they were both looking at him. He half turned, expecting to see Hawke—devising plans of action, giving instructions—before he remembered that the man was not with him. Teldryn offered no aid when Fenris turned to him next.

Scowling, Fenris drew his sword and jerked his head towards the cave. "More vampires," he grumbled under his breath, though loud enough for his companions to hear. "Blood mages, all of them."

* * *

Aela had explained that she could scout ahead if Fenris wished it, which he did. Every fibre of his being called him to fight while he waited instead. Even in another land, he knew magic when it was emanated from every square bit of ground, from every rock that made the walls of the cave. Teldryn snapped his fingers to summon flames at their tips, once, twice, three times—

"If you wished to let the bloodsuckers know that we are about, set yourself on fire and let us be out," Fenris hissed.

They were in a narrow stretch of tunnel, just a way down from the cave entrance. There were mushroom and strange weeds growing around his feet. Somewhere he thought he could hear water dripping.

"If Aela goes ahead and kills everyone by herself," Teldryn replied lazily, "I would have been bored for nothing, Bosmer."

"I don't know what that is, but whatever it is, it is not what I am."

"Altmer then, though you fall short by a lot of inches." There was that grin again, the one he could almost hear coming from behind the Dunmer's full-faced helmet.

"Shut up, fool."

A figure dropping into view at the far end of the tunnel caused both of them to reach for their sword hilts instinctively.

"Thralls and a few newbloods between here and the first cavern chamber," Aela informed, panther-walking up to them. "Older vampires deeper in and their leader makes his home in the main chamber directly above us. A ways to fall,"—she pointed towards the area she'd just dropped into—"but no ways to climb."

Fenris didn't know why but he looked over at Teldryn.

"Levitation magic has been outlawed since the Third Era," the Dunmer said, flapping the back of his hand at Fenris as if the latter was an over-loving pet trying to lick his face, "and I don't know it. Get out of my face."

"I have taken out the thralls and the newbloods," Aela went on, "but I will need help with the others. How do we proceed?" Here she turned to Fenris.

Fenris bared his teeth and drew his sword fully out of its sheath. "You pick your targets, and take care not to set me on fire, Dunmer."

"Meh," Teldryn sounded, "I preferred a straight fight anyway. Oh, before we go—" He pulled a bottle out from his pack and tossed to Fenris. "It is a potion of cure disease. Drink it when we get out. Vampires do not have to bite to infect."

"What about her?" Fenris asked, indicating Aela.

The woman's only response was to run down the incline towards the first cavern chamber. To his surprise, she started to strip out of her armour, seemingly bent on walking bare-breasted into battle.

Teldryn spoke, the grin once again in his voice, "She doesn't need one."

* * *

A guttural animal cry echoed from below and the Dunmer ran down to meet it.

Aela turned out to be a Werewolf, just one more thing magic-related that was set on making Fenris uncomfortable. However, she was useful in a fight against vampires who favoured close-quarter combat and for whom her very presence seemed to rile them into a stupor of bloodlust. Throughout their traverse in the cave, Aela took point, alerting them to dangers ahead, and pouncing on, mauling and tearing at any vampires in her path. Teldryn and Fenris had the make-work task of cutting down the ones who tried to swarm her.

Fenris' face was warm from the fireballs that flew past his head. He uttered a few curses in Tevene as one nearly singed his ear. As the vampires screamed their agony and flailed their arms to put the fires out, Fenris' dragonbone sword cut through them with little difficulty.

"Ah, so you _do_ have an arm about you!" he heard Teldryn exclaim.

Fenris drew up his sword to block a swing from one of the vampires' thralls. The blow from the battleaxe came down jaw-jarring hard and he had to dig in his heels in order to push back at it. The man staggered backwards and Fenris very nearly lost his footing.

"Focus on the battle, Dunmer!" he gritted out as he regained his balance.

Teldryn executed a graceful sword manoeuvre to cut down a newblood vampire before lobbing a fireball directly at the thrall who was preparing to take another swing at Fenris.

"Not if you are as good as I am," he drawled.

He killed the last vampire and turned to face Fenris. He gave a dramatic bow as the vampire turned to cinders behind him.

Aela in her beast form raised her nose to the air. She remained motionless for a beat before decidedly bounding towards the opening of another tunnel.

"How many of these blasted chambers are there?" Fenris demanded.

"We're should be near the master vampire's lair now," Teldryn told him. "Quickly! Follow her!"

Fenris was already in pursuit of Aela, trying to catch up with her long, lopping gallop. Teldryn followed close behind him, muttering about what a drag this whole business was.

The trio ran down a short and damp tunnel before coming to a halt where it opened up into a large chamber with a vaulting cave ceiling. A whole above cast enough light for them to see the stone altars that were arranged before a sinister-looking shrine―dark and barbed, overseen by a deity with a glowering skull and a spiked crown.

Bodies were laid out on the altars, each one of them stripped of garments and drained of blood, their pale skins ravaged by numerous gaping bite wounds. By one of them, a creature―ugly, bat-like wings folded on its back―had its mouth sunken deep into the pregnant belly of a young woman, its claws ripped through the skin to the red cocoon of womb and the dead, premature baby.

"What is this sickness?" Fenris demanded.

"Don't worry, he dies," Teldryn said, fire encasing a hand. As if in response, Aela let loose a deafening roar that stopped the master vampire mid-feed and caused it to turn its head towards them.

For a moment, no one moved. Then as if a lever had suddenly been pulled, the master vampire sprung at them, bared teeth still dripping with the blood of its victim. As it came, an arm outstretched towards Fenris, red swirls of magical energy were convening and growing into a ball in the centre of its palm.

"Bosmer!" Teldyrn exclaimed.

Teldryn had been summoning another fireball, but this he abandoned and started to sprint for Fenris with the full intention of tackling the latter to the ground. Fenris raised his sword but even he knew that a sword was no protection from powerful, life-draining magic. Suddenly, he wished for Hawke, for the mage's wall of ice that would stop the vampire and block its spell. Suddenly, he wished for Hawke, to just be there, raining fire from the sky and burn all the sickness of the world away.

What came was a blur of dark, matted fur, and a large canine body slamming into the vampire. Both creatures went reeling into the rock wall, the vampire grunting and the werewolf whining from the painful impact,

Aela was the first of the two to recover and pounced on the fallen vampire, ripping at its chest between spasms of furious roars. The vampire dug its feet into her torso and managed to free itself with a push. To further push Aela away, it summoned another spell into its palm and sent it flying into Aela's body, throwing her back. She skidded a short distance before she could dig her claws into the ground and gain traction for herself.

The vampire was on its feet and then lifted itself off the ground just as Aela lunged at it again, teeth and claws poised. A blast of the vampire's magic caught Aela in the side just as she missed the creature. She roared and her movements faltered momentarily. She did an about turn and made for the vampire again, appearing fully and truly enraged.

"Bosmer!" Teldryn shouted, lobbing fireballs at the vampire which seemed to cause it enough of a distracting pain.

"Keep it burning!" Fenris ordered. "But watch out for Aela!"

As a fireball found its way to the vampire's head, Aela came in low and swept the vampire's legs from under him before grabbing one in her maw. The vampire was snatched from the air and crashed unceremoniously to the ground. Seeing his chance, Fenris summoned his lyrium abilities and dashed forward, where he cut the vampire from below its ribs and upwards to the base of its neck as he phased his body through it.

With an echoing scream, the vampire's head came free of its body, bounding off an altar before falling to the ground. It rolled towards Teldryn who set out a foot to stop it. Behind Fenris, the vampire's body crumpled to the ground, where it disintegrated into dust.

The three of them stood around the remains, breathing fast as the exhaustion and the relief came to them in a rush. It dawned on Fenris how harrowing the fight had been. At any moment, he realised he could have lost his life in a dark and dismal cave. What was worse, he could have caused others to lose theirs as well. Aela's strength and Teldryn's well-timed spells had worked to keep that from happening.

Teldryn was the first to sink the ground. He raised a hand and a faint tinkling sound could be heard as it glowed with captured sunbursts.

Teldryn contemplated the spell rather tiredly before saying, "Never thought that I have to use it myself." The spell enveloped him and Fenris could see the Dunmer visibly gaining strength.

Aela, who had laid down to rest with her wolf chin on the front paws, lifted her nose to the air. Without a look at them, she bounded towards a wall and began scaling it towards the hole above.

Fenris turned when he heard Teldryn chuckle. "She needs to feed. And probably dress herself somewhere away from us men. Though..."―Teldryn touched his own helmeted chin―"I would rather like to see that."

"You are disgusting," Fenris remarked, sinking down the ground beside the Dunmer. Fenris was smiling, feeling at once drained and invigorated.

Teldryn let out another chuckle and said, "Best drink that potion I gave you. You can never tell with vampires."

Having said that, he retrieved a vial from his belt, popped off the cork stopper with a flick of a thumb and proceeded to down the contents in a single gulp. Fenris followed suit and retched a little when he found that the potion smelled and probably tasted like bird droppings. His eyes were watering by the time he finished the bottle, causing Teldryn to burst out in laughter.

"The hawk feathers and the mubcrab chitin does it give it a certain pungency," he said as he picked himself up. Then he stretched his hand out to Fenris and jerked his head towards a pile of chests and barrels in the far corner. "The foot is likely in one of them. Let's take it and be off to Jorrvaskr."

As an afterthought, he added, "After some mead and a rest at an inn."

"Jorrvaskr?" Fenris asked as he clasped Teldryn's arm.

"Home of the Companions!" Teldryn replied with a flourish. "Likely where our esteemed Harbinger will give his verdict eh, Fenris?"

Fenris grinned at the man and made for the pile to retrieve 'The Unlucky Rabbit's Foot', which was all that this adventure had been about.

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 **Next Chapter: Companions**

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A/N: My apologies that this chapter has taken so long to be uploaded. Between work and other projects, I have had a bout of writer's block for a very long time. Hoping to write and update the story over the course of the next weeks! Enjoy this one!


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